Finding Hosea

I climbed out of my dusty old Camaro and walked up to the door of the old bungalow on East Portland Street, just south of I-10, as it cut through downtown Phoenix. The door opened before I knocked on it.

“We don’t want any,” the young guy, who looked mostly Asian, but dark-skinned enough to be a mix, said, standing in the doorway, trying to block out a view into the house, but being too small and lean to pull that off. He was just in baggy athlete shorts and flip-flops. He looked good—trim, hard-bodied, and lightly muscled, everything in proportion, and the waistband of the shorts dipping to show a line of trimmed, curly pubic hair. He hadn’t gotten all of his face makeup off, which identified him as able to play at something else. I knew makeup. I was a stripper in a Las Vegas gay club. I knew what to do with makeup. What I could see of what was left on him indicated he knew how to apply it as well. He just hadn’t had a reason to wipe it all off.

“Hi, I’m Miguel Carillo,” I introduced myself with a nonthreatening smile. “I’m not selling anything. I’m looking for my cousin, Hosea. He left this address as where he might be. Is he here, please?”

“No Hosea here,” the Asian young man said, as he started to close the door in my face. He’d looked me up and down and I got the impression he wanted me out of the picture right fast.

“He’s gone. A couple of weeks gone,” a voice from behind the Asian guy, delivered from the shadows of the house interior, said. A hand pushed the Asian to the side and I saw a burly, balding guy, maybe in his early forties, sitting in a wheelchair with a fully cast leg propped up in front of him. He too was wearing shorts, but he had a drooping T-shirt on, with a deep neck slit and side slits that revealed the shortfall of hair was only on the head. He had a profusion of curly brown hair falling out of the slits at the neck and sides. He looked thuggish, but he hadn’t been in the wheelchair long. He was muscular. His muscles had muscles. He couldn’t have been in the cast for long. It hadn’t been that long since half his day had gone to developing muscle.

“My, my, ain’t you the looker?” he said. The look on the younger Asian guy’s face told me why he had wanted me gone quickly.

“Gone?” I asked. “Do you know where?”

We—my extended family and I—hadn’t heard from Hosea in Vegas since he’d taken a job from the Internet and left the family some six weeks earlier. We were a closeknit family. Six weeks was a long time without contact. His mother, my aunt, Maria, was worried about him, and, as I had some time off and knew about the job he’d left to take up—and Maria didn’t—I volunteered to try to find him.

His mother didn’t know he was actively gay. For that matter she didn’t know I was actively gay, either. She was from a world that wouldn’t know how to handle that. I knew that Hosea had gotten antsy about his short-order cook job in a fancy fusion restaurant and had wanted something more adventuresome. He’d pulled up a gay employment site on the Internet and we’d gone over the listings together. The one he’d applied for and gotten was at this address in Phoenix. It had advertised for a houseboy and companion. Everyone using the site knew what “companion” stood for. After the initial questions were over in site exchanges, this aspect got down to explicit photos and favorite positions.

“No, I don’t know where he went. But he left some stuff in his room here. You’re welcome to come in and get it to take it to him when you find him. Maybe take a load off and have a cold beer. It’s a shittin’ hot day today. Come on in. Stand aside and let the boy in, Lek.” He’d wheeled to the door, putting the young Asian guy behind him, and was looking me over real well. “Hosea was a good looker, but you put him to shame. You Miguel, are you? I’m Carl. Lek here is Thai.”

“Yes, sir, I’m Miguel,” I answered. And, so, the other guy’s version of Asian was Thai. I never could tell about Asians.

“He told me about you. Birds of a feather, he’d said. Good to see you. Come on in. You’ve driven all the way from Vegas?”

“Yes, sir.” Just what kind of feathers had Miguel been talking about in relation to me, I wondered. Was this guy telling me he knew I was as actively gay as Miguel was?

“Must be really thirsty. Lek, get this man a beer. Me too.” He rolled back from the doorway so I could enter, and I did so. The door opened right into a living area to the right and a dining table and chairs to the left. A kitchen ran back behind the dining room. A central hallway moved off straight ahead into the bowels of the house. The furniture was Spartan, but tidy and in good repair.

My gaze went to the Thai houseboy, Lek, as he moved away from me to the kitchen. His back was covered in red welts, some raised areas looking like old wounds but some others looking fresh. The backs of his legs were welted as well. I looked quickly away, disturbed, but not wanting to get into anything that might be going on here. The young man seemed happy enough. Some liked it that way, I knew. When you’re a male stripper in Vegas, you’ve seen it all. I had no idea whether Lek liked it that way or not. There were situations in which I thought I might.

Lek certainly wasn’t happy that I was here and getting attention from Carl.

My thoughts went back to Carl and him knowing my name and saying Hosea had told him about me. I wondered how much Hosea had told him. From what I knew of the job, the man must know that Hosea was gay and he probably had been fucking him while Hosea was here, working as the man’s houseboy, a job clearly being filled now by the small Asian he’d called Lek. Had Hosea told the man I was gay too, I wondered again—and a stripper in a gay club?

“Hosea told me you were a stripper in a gay club in Vegas,” he said. “My name’s Carl, by the way,” he repeated in case I hadn’t picked up on that to begin with.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said as we settled in the living room with cans of beer Lek delivered. After Lek handed out the beer, Carl grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him into his lap, wrapping his arms around him and telling me that Lek was half Thai and half black American soldier and all sex. Carl’s hand went to Lek’s crotch and the young Thai relaxed into the big man’s lap, looking at me with dreamy “he does me good” eyes. Carl’s hand went under Lek’s waistband and I could see that he was slow-jacking the small guy inside his shorts. Carl didn’t seem to be the least embarrassed that I could see that. But then, he probably was doing it to get my attention, establishing himself as a cocky guy who I’d melt for and want to open my legs for.

“And he said you work for an escort agency and do tricks with men on the side.”

“Yes, I said.” Damn that Hosea and his big mouth, I thought. But I also thought that, as thuggish as he looked, Carl was a pretty sexy man. I wondered how he’d broken his leg. I also wondered why Hosea left his employment so quickly and where he went. I needed to find out what this man knew about where Hosea had gone from here. Being nice to him and at least pretending he could do me would seem the quickest way to get the information on Hosea I needed.

He was evasive about that and clearly wanted to spin out our conversation and me being here. The looks he was giving me were ones of bald sexual interest. Was he thinking of an afternoon delight, even though he had Lek here on his lap? Apparently so. Was I thinking of an afternoon encounter too? Maybe. Beyond the plan to get information out of this dude, I admit I was horny for him. My mind was already spinning on what positions you took with a guy limited by a cast on his leg.

“What are your going rates for a blow job. Must be pretty expensive in Las Vegas.”

I told him.

“Yep, that’s way above what we pay here in Phoenix.”

“Do you have any idea where Hosea went from here?” I asked, trying to change the thrust of the conversation. Carl wasn’t helping. He’d pulled Lek’s shorts off and was fondling a naked young man in his lap. Lek was enjoying the workup. He was panting and moving languidly in the man’s embrace, making with the “fuck me” eyes.

Carl was looking at me, giving me challenging looks. Would I stay or go? I stayed. “He said something about New Mexico. Maybe there’s something he left in the room he was using here that would help with that. As I said, maybe you can check out his things he left and take them with you.”

“Maybe?” I asked. When he first mentioned it, there was no maybe. I did want to go through whatever Hosea had left here to maybe find clues to where he is now. It’s why I was staying here with this guy making so clear what he’d like to get from me.

“Maybe if you’re good to me, you can take whatever of his you want,” he amended. “What’s the Vegas rate for a fuck from a rent-boy?”

I told him. But I went on to ask why Hosea had left here.

“When he answered my ad, Lek here had done so too,” Carl said. “So, I tried them both out. I would have chosen Hosea, but I guess he didn’t like to have to compete for the job. He didn’t stay long.” He fished around in the pocket of his shorts and came up with a wad of cash. “You look like a real honey. You do it for this, and I’ll let you go through Hosea’s things and take what you want. Watch me do Lek here for a while and then give it to me. Go or stay. It’s up to you.”

I stayed.

I sat there, across from him in the small living room, and watched him fuck Lek. Carl’s shorts buttoned down the sides so that he could get them off easily even with the thick, white plaster cast on his leg. He quickly was as functionally naked as Lek was. He had a big, thick one. I almost hyperventilated to see him stuff that in the hole of the small, slim Thai. But Lek took him and then went into an athletic position, putting his ankles on the Carl’s shoulders and pressing the palms of his hands on the floor between Carl’s legs. Lek panted and groaned as Carl grasped his waist between his hands and pulled the diminutive Thai on and off his cock. Lek was a player; he knew what to do and how to make it interesting.

I couldn’t help myself. I flared my jeans fly open, released what was now a hard erection, and stroked myself while Carl fucked Lek.

“Yeah, right, enjoy yourself while you wait. God, you’ve got a beautiful body. I’ll do you after I’m done with Lek.”

Watching me as he fucked Lek, Carl said, “Nice,” and I knew he wasn’t referring to Lek.

Carl didn’t finish with Lek. He pushed him off to the side, growling. “It’s getting dark. I think Miguel will be staying for dinner—and longer. Go fix us something.” And, as Lek pulled on his shorts and headed for the kitchen, Carl looked at me and said, “Your turn if you want your cousin’s stuff and this wad of cash. Come over here and give me head.”

I did want Hosea’s things and the cash and I responded well to men’s sexual commands. I also was in heat. The man was so open about everything and he had a killer body, despite the leg cast. I knelt between the man’s thighs and gave him suck. He had a really big dick. And then, like Lek, I sat in Carl’s lap and rode his cock. I rode it in reverse of what Lek had, though, facing Carl, my ankles on his shoulders, and my back arching over toward the floor, aiding his pulls on my waist by pushing off the floor with the palms of my hands—the mirror image of how the Thai had taken the cock. I wanted Carl to know I was a player too—and he got the message.

“You’re a good little bugger with this,” he said as he fucked. With me, Carl filled the bulb of his rubber.

While Lek fixed dinner, Carl showed me back to the room Hosea had slept in. “You can stay the night, or longer, if you want,” he said. “Maybe you want to apply for the houseboy job. I’m getting tired of Thai food.”

Maybe not, I thought. What I found in the room surprised me. Hosea didn’t have a whole lot of stuff in this world and there was enough in this room that I don’t know all of what he took with him when he left. Clothes enough were here and even the duffel bag and backpack I’d seen him off with in Vegas. Strange. Why didn’t he take his stuff with him, I wondered.

Going through the nightstand drawers, I found a slip of paper with a name on it, Hayden Nichelson, and a file number that looked to me like it was from the gay employment Internet site Hosea had used to get this job. I pulled the site up on my cellphone—I’d joined the site myself, so there wasn’t any problem checking on the number. Sure enough, the file was for a Hayden Nichelson, with a Flagstaff, Arizona, address. He was a pretty good-looking dude for his age—probably mid-to-late forties. He looked pretty sexy in his “baring all” photo. The cock shot revealed a championship piece. He was advertising for a houseboy, companion, and proofreader, claiming he was a novelist. So, that was a place to start.

Looking out of the window, I saw that it was a little late to start today and probably too late to start looking for a place to stay for the night. I’d have to take Carl up on his offer to stay here, in what was Hosea’s bed. I suppose that might require some more sex with Carl, but he’d fucked me once already and had done it well. I had nothing to pretend or protect at this point.

Lek was ringing a bell, which I took as an announcement for dinner. I took one more look around the room and indulged in one more internal questioning of why Hosea had taken so little of what he owned with him when he left here—and why did he stay on this job for such a short time?

Then I dragged myself down the hall toward the living areas. There were at least three bedrooms and a bathroom off this hall. I wondered if Lek was in one of the smaller bedrooms or whether he bunked with Carl. It didn’t seem like Hosea had been denied his own bedroom while he was here.

Carl said he was tired of Thai food, but I hoped Lek had made some for dinner. I hadn’t had Thai food for a while and I liked it.

* * * *

That was the night the nightmare first visited me, not in its full-blown variation, but recognizable as the same one that would haunt me again.

Shortly after I went to bed in the room Hosea had occupied, Carl visited me to, he said, “Collect the room rent for the night.” I didn’t fight him as he wheeled himself into the room and dragged himself up onto the bed. I didn’t help him in this, but I didn’t fight him either. I’d admitted that I was a rent-boy and he’d already fucked me, so there didn’t seem to be any reason to pretend I was virginal—or to demand he pay me in these circumstances. Sex is a renewable resource. Nobody knows that better than a rent-boy.

I lay there on my back, helping him position himself between my legs a bit by stuffing a pillow under the small of my back to raise my pelvis. And I spread and bent my legs so that he could lay between them comfortably enough in his leg cast, his hands grasping my hips, which rocked against his face and I moaned, as he sucked my cock and balls and then moved his tongue to my hole. I certainly couldn’t say I was resisting him; I gave him every help in getting into place.

He didn’t have to ask me to let him fuck me after giving me this attention. I was begging him for the cock, and pulling at his biceps to help drag him fully on top of me. Giving a small laugh of victory, he did so, his cast not helping but not getting much in the way, either, and pulled himself up my body. I clutched his buttocks to pull him up and then moved my hands between our bellies and held him erect as he moved into position. I gave a little yelp when he entered me, strongly, confidently, and started to pump me. He knew what he was doing; he had plenty of experience. One of my hands remained between our bellies and stroked my cock, while the other one grasped one of his biceps tightly. His hands went to my throat and he cruelly controlled my breathing to the rhythm of his pumping. There was no evidence I wasn’t fully accepting the fuck.

So constricting was his breath control that I blacked out during the fuck and that was when the nightmare visited me.

In the dream I segued into being on the bed, with someone heavy on top of me, controlling my breathing both with hands gripping my throat and with the sheer weight of his body on top of me. He was deep inside me, deeper than any man had gone before. Everything was in a hazy swirl, as it generally was with dreams. A disembodied voice was repeatedly crying out “Beware. Leave. Escape.” I turned my head and my gaze went to uneven floor boards in the room, boards that had been taken up and not fully put back in place before. “No don’t look!” the voice cried out. And then another voice, a younger voice, was crying out in pain-pleasure.

Was it my voice? I was being fucked good. I had a big-cocked man between my thighs and we were moving together well in the rhythm of the fuck. In the dark, it didn’t matter how old he was or how good looking. He was muscular and big cocked and good in the rhythm of the fuck. I could feel the deep penetration of the cock and the stretching thickness of it, but not any sensation other than that. That helped me realize it was a dream. I certainly was feeling the sensation of Carl’s cock working inside me before I had blacked out.

The cries of pain-passion became more pronounced and more ominous as I swam back into consciousness. When I was fully awake, I found I was alone on the bed, on top of the sheets, still panting and moaning. The cries that had intruded in my dream and had awakened me were still there, real, and there was the sound of rhythm thumping against a wall somewhere.

I rolled off the bed and padded out into the corridor. The sound was more pronounced here and the thudding was against a wall onto the corridor from behind where the kitchen was. I went out into the living area and into the kitchen. There was a door there into someplace behind the kitchen. From the feel of the wall in the bedroom corridor, I determined that there was a room there, behind the kitchen, that was the same size as the bedrooms further down the corridor. A fourth bedroom, but opening off the kitchen rather than the bedroom corridor? Maybe a servant’s room, but this house wasn’t fancy enough to have a servant’s room.

The cries had stopped but the thudding against the wall continued. I tried the door, but it was locked. On the way back to my bedroom, I checked the two bedrooms other than the one I had been sleeping in. Both were empty. Neither Carl nor Lek were in either of the two beds in those rooms. I had zonked out before Carl was finished and he’d moved on to Lek, fucking him somewhere in the house behind a closed door. I dragged myself back to my bed and fell instantly into a deep sleep.

The next morning I couldn’t even be sure that anything other than the nightmare had happened the night before. I was sore down there, so I did assume that Carl had fucked me—and that I had not only let him but had wanted him to do it. He was a muscular, hung man. Other than the cruel breath control play, he was all I wanted in a man—at least in the dark.

I looked to the floor of the room without really understanding why I wanted to do so—and to a particular area. It was covered with a throw rug, though, and I just shrugged the cobwebs out of my brain, pulled on briefs, and went out to the living area.

An exclaimed “Fuck!” told me where to go. Carl was in the kitchen, working, not too efficiently, at making himself breakfast from his wheelchair. He was just in briefs. He saw me and said, “Shit, I can’t reach everything I need. Help me. Start showing your houseboy skills.”

“Wheel into the dining room. I’ll take over from here,” I said. And, as he did so, I asked. “Where’s Lek? Doesn’t he fix your meals?”

“Lek’s gone. Left last night,” Carl said.

Now that sounded peculiar, but I made him an omelet, which he obviously liked, because he said, “Shit, that was a good one. And it wasn’t Thai food. How about you staying and being my houseboy?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, not wanting to tell him that all I wanted to do now was gather up Hosea’s stuff and get out of there. I couldn’t deny I liked his cock and what he could do with it, though.

“Come here and ride me,” he growled.

I’d seen that coming, as he’d pulled the waistband of his briefs under his balls and was stroking a mighty fine erection. I had no pride; I always was motivated by a good erection on a man.

I backed the wheelchair to a wall, straddled him, facing him, lowered myself on his cock, and rode him, using the leverage of my feet against the wall behind him and my grip on his biceps to raise and lower myself on his shaft. He voiced approval of the position and jacked me off with one of his hands as we fucked. The handles of his wheelchair were thumping on the wall in a reminder of the noises I’d heard from the locked room behind the kitchen the previous night.

We came almost together. I loved the cock but was frightened by the man and something here seemed very not right.

An hour later, he was gone for a few hours, picked up by a transportation service to go to a doctor’s appointment. I promised to run the vacuum cleaner while he was gone and to plan a lunch for him.

My vacuum playing led me into the bedrooms. In the one I figured that Lek was using, I found about the same thing I’d found in Hosea’s room. There was little evidence that Lek was gone. If so, he’d left a lot of his clothes and other belongings behind.

Enough of this shit, I thought. I went back into Hosea’s room. Inexplicably, I found myself going to the spot on the floor covered by a throw rug. I had no idea why I’d done this. I pulled the rug away to find that the floorboards had been pulled up in an area and put back into place, but not all that well. I reached out to pull them up again, but a voice—a voice I’d heard before without, at that point, realizing where I had—cried out, “No, don’t look. Beware! Leave! Escape!”

In panic, I lowered the rug and moved quickly around the room, picking up everything I thought Hosea would really want back. I kept telling myself that Hosea was OK, that he was just fine, and that I’d find him eventually. This time I found his cellphone in the bottom drawer of the nightstand. There was no way Hosea would leave this beyond in a planned move. Now I knew why communications with him had gone dead—at least by way of use of this phone. Within twenty minutes I was out of the front door, into my old Camaro, with Hosea’s shit in the back, and on the road to Flagstaff. I had tried the door to the hidden room with the thumping wall behind the kitchen before I left, afraid what I might find there, but it was locked tight.

I was a good fifty miles down the road before it hit me that the floorboards related to my nightmare the night before and that the voice warning me to leave was Hosea’s.

* * * *

I had this App on my phone that triangulated on gay-friendly and also Hispanic- and Native American-friendly motels and bars in the Southwest states. I stopped in a strip mall parking lot north of Phoenix off of I-17 and used it to find a gay bar in Flagstaff. The best I could come up with was the Sportsman’s Bar and Grill. Then, using Hosea’s cellphone, I went to the gay employment site on the Internet and saw that the listing he’d hooked into, Hayden Nichelson, still had an active request for a houseboy. Looking further through Hosea’s phone I saw that an appointment had been made between them. So, Hosea had gone at least that far in plans beyond Carl’s house. I put in a bid for an interview, knowing that the “companion” aspect of the listing meant there would be an audition. I wanted a face to face, though, to find out if Hosea had made it that far. I suggested a happy hour time at the Sportsman’s Bar and Grill if he’d give me an interview.

I went for lunch at a Chinese restaurant in the strip mall. By the time I’d finished, Nichelson had responded, agreeing to the time and place for an interview.

So, the job was still open—or open again. It was the only shot I knew of to find Hosea at this point, though, so I’d take it.

I didn’t want to go all the way into Flagstaff for the night and I wasn’t coming up with any reasonably priced motels there, so I booked in Sedona at a two-star motel claiming to be gay friendly. The Web site said the Monte Verde Motel was in an Hispanic and Native American section of West Sedona, a couple of blocks off Route 89A. I booked there by phone, drove there, checked in, and sacked out until dark. I went to the Tortas de Fuego Mexican Restaurant for dinner, feeling at home, and then sought out the nearby gay bar I’d found listed, Tico’s.

I was sent into immediate confusion when I entered the bar. There were a lot of great-looking guys, Hispanics and Native Americans, there—as well as just as many not great-looking guys—but I thought I’d walked into a parody. They were all in “American Indian” costume and were wearing masks.

Seeing my quizzical look, the guy at the door, a bulky guy sitting on a stool just inside the entrance—probably the bouncer—said, “It’s Halloween tomorrow, Sweetcheeks. We’re having a costume party tonight. You gotta have a mask. No cover, but $10 if you don’t come in with a mask and we have to loan you one.”

I paid for the mask and moved into the room. I went to the bar and, as I was putting the mask on, I found I was standing beside a bronzed god. He looked like he was Native American for real—tall, sculpted, bare-chested, with low-rise buckskin trousers with a flap in front showing curly pubic hair at the waistline. He was gorgeous, maybe in his mid-twenties, like me, with glossy, straight, black hair cascading down to his shoulders and a sleeve tattoo up his right arm and over his shoulder and right pec that was a swirl pattern in subtle red, pastel green, and a rose color. He had on a chunky turquoise and silver necklace with a round pendant nestled between his pecs.

He turned to me and smiled. “Haven’t seen you here before. Fresh meat?”

“I’m from Vegas. Just passing through,” I said. “Been to Phoenix. Going to Flagstaff.” I wondered if the “fresh meat” reference meant he was a top and would be rough. That didn’t put my interest off.

“Not to Flagstaff tonight, I hope,” he said. He had a hand on my forearm. If this was the start of a hookup, I was game. He was a Native American god. There was a good chance he was a manhandler. That’s what I was in the mood for.

“No, I’m here for the night,” I said. “At the Monte Verde.”

“Cool,” he said. “I know it. Good folks there. They don’t hassle you.” His hand went down, possessively in terms of gay seduction, to my hip. “But you’re not in costume. You have to go with the flow, man. The jeans and boots are fine, but that shirt’s gotta go.” He unbuttoned my shirt. I let him, not pointing out that I just came into town and didn’t know about the costume party. He pulled the shirt off my back and tucked the hem into the waistband of my jeans at the side. I let him. “Great body,” he said, running the back of his hand up my torso. I let him do this too, and as he did so, I touched his chest with the tips of the fingers of my right hand.

“Thanks. That’s one great sleeve tatt you have,” I added.

“I like it. Are we going to get along real good?” He was palming one of my pecs.

“It certainly seems so,” I answered, not moving away from his hand.

“What is it that you do in Vegas? Card dealer at a casino, or, with that body, a dancer in a revue?”

“Got it in two,” I said and laughed. “I’m a dancer and stripper.” There were times when acknowledging that cut through a lot of information delivery. This was one of those times.

“I knew it. I could tell, just from your body and the way you move.” He ran his hand back down my torso, ending up at my waistband. He stopped there and gave me a pointed look. I didn’t react negatively, so he unbuttoned my fly, letting the jeans flare just a bit, and ran fingers over the curly black hair where my pubes started. I let him do this as well.

“Do you top or bottom?” he asked, getting right to it.

“Either, but mostly bottom.”

“Sweet.”

I had come here for more than a drink—I wanted a straightforward hookup with a young guy who would get Carl out of my system. This could be that guy.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he asked. The Native-American-themed Halloween costume party was swirling around us in the room, but we were zeroed in on each other, in a bubble all our own.

“Yes, sure,” I said, knowing that that was a major step in a hookup and further established that he was dominant. Everything he was saying and doing toward me screamed that he was a dominator. “And what is it that you do . . . ?” I left space for him to fill in his name as well as his occupation. He had the musculature of a construction worker.

“I’m Choovio,” he said. “That’s Hopi. Guys call me Cho, though.” He pronounced it as “Show,” but he spelled it out for me. “I live and work at the Hopi reservation northeast of here. I build things. I’m Hopi.”

Ah, truly a Native American. Just as I had surmised. It wasn’t just a costume for him tonight. I told him my name, so now we were pals. We took a few minutes out to down most of our drink. “So, it isn’t just a costume for you. This is how you are.”

“Yes, this is me, all but the mask. Disappointed?”

“Not in the least. I think you’re magnificent.”

“This is a gay bar,” he said, adding, “being from out of town maybe you didn’t know that.”

“Yes, I knew that. I checked out the kind of place I wanted to go to beforehand.”

“Perfect,” he said. His hand snaked around my hips and he laid it on the small of my back, his index finger moving down into my crack. He didn’t reach as far as the hole, but we both knew what he was signaling—and I let him do it. I lifted my buttocks in case he wanted to get closer to the hole. He did want to and he did.

“What else do you do, Cho? Do you have any other interests than working and living at the Hopi reservation?”

“Yes. I fuck dancers.” He put his lips to my ear and said, “I want to fuck you. Am I rushing you too much?”

“Good to know you want me. And no, I’m easy for a hunk like you. You want to fuck me right here on the bar? Lay me out on top of the bar and let all these guys watch you fuck me?”

“Would that give you a thrill? Is that what strippers like you let men do in the clubs in Vegas?”

“Yes. I’ve worked some pretty wild bars there.”

“Is that what you let men do—lay you on the bar top, with other guys gathered round?”

“When they look like you.”

“Perfect.” He laughed. “You wanna show me the inside of the room you’ve got at the Monte Verde Motel?”

“So, not here on the bar top?” I asked and gave a little laugh.

“I want you all to myself.” Now his finger did descend to my hole and I gave a little gasp as he pressed inside. He pulled me close and worked my hole with the finger—and I let him.

“So, you always this fast?” he asked.

“It’s what I came in here for.”

“You came in especially for me?”

“Yes.”

* * * *

At the motel he fucked me in a modified doggy, with me kneeling on the bottom edge of the bed, arms flung back grasping his biceps, as he cupped my chin with one hand, arching my head back into his chest, palmed my belly with the other, and fucked me hard and long from behind. His shaft and his cocking were as magnificent as the rest of him.

Then, with me on my belly on the bed and my arms spread about my head, my wrists strapped to the top rung of the headboard, he straddled my hips and rode me like a rodeo cowboy. Once again, one of his hands cupped my chin, pulling my head back into his chest, and the other one palmed my chest, a thumb and forefinger playing with my nipples as I rocked under him and he mastered me in long, deep thrusts.

In the middle of the night, stretched out along my body, he punched me lightly in the side. “Hey, wake up. You must be having a nightmare.”

I was. It was the same as the night before, in Hosea’s room in Carl’s house in Phoenix. But it was clearer and more ominous this time. I was being ridden hard, stretched out on Hosea’s bed, my wrists bound to the headboard, crying out in a pain-passion that I somehow knew it was causing although I didn’t actually experience any sensation in the dream state. The heavy dude riding me also had a hand whip and was lashing me. The bed was thump, thump, thumping against the wall to the cadence of the thrusts. During this, my eyes went to the floor beside the bed, to the area of the floor where the boards had been taken up and not put back well. Only one wrist was bound now, and although my ass was still being ridden and my back was still being lashed, I was reaching out for the uneven boards on the floor. A voice—Hosea’s voice—was crying out, “No, don’t look. Beware! Leave! Escape!” My fingers touched the first of the displaced boards.

That was the point at which Cho woke me up. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, handsome,” I said. “I just don’t want to sleep the night away when I have someone like you in bed with me.” I nudged him onto his back and moved over on top of him, kissing and licking down his body, worshipping his magnificent body, reaching his groin. He groaned as I took him into my throat and gave him deep head.

* * * *

Hayden Nichelson was not at all what I expected. I found him sitting in a back booth, in the shadows, of the Sportsman’s Bar and Grill in Flagstaff. He was, first, older than I thought he’d be, easily in his sixties from the ruggedness of his facile features and the whiteness of his wavy white-gray head hair of his beard and mustache. His eyes were a piercing black. Everything about him was dark except for that mesmerizing gleam in his eyes. He was wearing an expensive-looking, well-tailored black suit, with a black silky shirt, open almost down to his navel, showing a strong, muscular chest matted with gray curly hair and with a large silver medallion on a silver chain, the medallion nestling in the hair between his bulging, but firm pecs. When he reached out to take my hand, more holding and caressing it than shaking it, I saw that his nails were long and painted black.

His eyes drilled into me and there was a sneery sort of smile on his face.

“Miguel Carillo, did you say?” he asked. The name seemed to mean something to him. I wanted to ask if he had met my cousin, Hosea Carillo, but I didn’t ask at that point—and later, it seemed never right to bring it up.

“Yes, sir. From Las Vegas. Is the position you advertised still open?”

“The position I’ve listed on the gay employment site?”

“Yes.”

“You understand what that means—and what advertising for a companion on that site means? Here, sit down. No, not across from me. Beside me.” He slid out of the booth, motioned me to slide in, and then followed me, putting me against the wall. He immediately put his left arm around me. I wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon.

“Yes, I understand.”

“In your messages you say you’ve worked as a male stripper in gay clubs in Las Vegas.”

“Yes.”

“You take cock? You’re a submissive?”

“Yes.” I’d noted that in the message exchange with him already. It sounded bald said out loud, though.

“You won’t have trouble handling this?” he asked. He took my hand under the surface of the table and moved it to his crotch. He was unzipped and freed. His cock, half hard, was huge.

“No, sir, but what about the other needs you have listed.”

“You know how to cook and take care of a house?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you wrote that you are an aspiring writer. So, you are educated enough to proofread my work as a novelist?”

“Yes, I think so. That’s what attracted me to your listing. What do you write?”

“I write about the occult.”

Why was I not surprised?

“But it’s the writing aspect of the job you are interested in? You will have trouble with the sex? I am a demanding man, with constant needs.”

“No, the sex is fine. I enjoy sex. I enjoy older, more experienced men too.”

“Shall we go to my home then? You can follow me, up into the Fort Valley to the northwest, into the red rocks. You understand there will be a testing. You have come at a bad time for me—tonight is All Hallow’s Eve, and I have duties to perform. You will have to stay until at least tomorrow, even if I find you wanting.”

“I understand,” I answered. When we got out onto the street I saw that he was driving an old, but in pristine condition, Cadillac hearse. It, of course, was black.

* * * *

He was surprisingly athletic for his apparent age and inventive. It was almost mystical how young he is in the fuck given his apparent age. He was hung and virile and vigorous. He could fuck for hours, coming again and again and quickly reloading. He did fuck me for hours. He was something from out of this world. He drilled me and drilled me and drilled me. He had barely come—minutes after I did—when he was running his hands up my inner thighs, parting my legs, and mounting me, thrusting inside me with a hard, long erection, and fucking me again.

The room was dramatically black—the entire interior of the log house hanging on the side of a twin hills topped above it in two red-rock chimney buttes was dramatic, reflecting the occult, and draped internally in black. The bedroom he fucked me in had black walls, ceiling, and carpeting. The bed was draped in black silk. The windows were French doors, overlooking a dramatic scene of undulating desert hills topped with red rock buttes and semiarid foliage.

He dominated me and rode me hard—and repeatedly.

The surrounding blackness contrasted with and emphasized what else was in the bed-centered room. There were floor-to-ceiling mirrors on all four walls, reflecting the bed and a mirror the size of the bed on the ceiling. And spotlighting focused on the bed. There were cameras at the ceiling at the four corners of the room. This all emphasized what the bodies on the bed were doing and it was all captured by the mirrors for immediate viewing enjoyment and cameras for viewing pleasure later. This was a performance room, and I had become a performer—it was more that I became the stage prop of a performer. He was still drilling me long after I lay there, completely open and semiconscious—and defenseless. He not only fucked the stuffing out of me endlessly and exotically, he also let me watch it from all angles, as did his cameras.

He wiped me out.

He wore nothing but a billowing black silk cape and black sandals laced up to his knees and the silver medallion around his neck. His lightly pelted body was hard, Zeus-like for a man his age. I was naked, and he fucked me in every position imaginable, again and again, through the afternoon and into the twilight.

He fucked me against the wall, with me grasping straps hanging down from the top edge of the ceiling and with my knees hooked on his hips. He fucked me in a reverse bulldog, with me on my knees at the foot of the bed, my torso reclining to the carpet, supporting my weight on my elbows, and Nichelson crouched over my ass, facing the headboard, and fucking down into my hole. He lay on his back on the bed, with me suspended over him, crab like, legs bent, feet flat on the surface outside his legs, and my hands pressed into the mattress beside his biceps. I watched it in the overhead mirror, melting to the sensuality of it both in seeing it and feeling it, as he raised and lowered me on his cock. And he fucked me with me stretched out on my belly on the bed, and him on top of me, in pushup stance, an arm embracing my chest, and thrusting, thrusting, thrusting inside me.

He fucked me to exhaustion, leaving me lying, face down on the bed, one arm dangling off to the side, panting and blowing bubbles. I was totally fucked but amazed at what he could-and did do—and did again and again and again.

Could I endure this as his houseboy? But what was I thinking? I was here looking for Hosea. I wasn’t really looking for a job with this glorious monster. But was Hosea here before me? Was he unable to endure more than a few days of this? This man was a witch. He was from some other world, a world of master cocksmen. He was a warlock. He could destroy me. Had he destroyed Hosea before me?

I heard the lock turn in the door when Nichelson left. There was an en suite bathroom and a stocked kitchenette in the corner, so I could live here. Would I be living here as the man’s captive?

He had expressed pleasure at what I could—and did—take from him. In leaving he said the houseboy job was mine. It was declared as a done deal rather than a job offer. But he said that, for now, he wouldn’t see me again until the next day—that this was Halloween and he had duties to perform. His last statement bowled me over.

“You are a sweet, accomplished piece of ass. I do enjoy a small brown honey with a tight hole. Even more delicious than your cousin was. You are going to bring me great pleasure; I will use you totally.”

When I’d recovered, I rolled off the bed and padded around the room, looking for a sign that Hosea had, indeed, been here. I was naked and without clothes in the room—yet another mechanism for keeping me in place, a captive of this man’s desires.

I found evidence of Hosea. In the back corner of the closet, having fallen to the floor, was a shirt. I recognized it. It was an Hawaiian-patterned monstrosity that I’d given to Hosea myself as a joke. But Hosea was tasteless. He’d liked the shirt and wore it often. He wasn’t wearing it now. It had been left in this room. I also found a pair of briefs in a bureau drawer. So, I wouldn’t be completely naked if I escaped from here.

If I wanted to escape from here.

The man was a fucking god. What other melting sexual positions did he have at his command? I was weak where it came to lying under men who were masters. Hayden Nichelson was a master of sex.

I saw that there was a TV screen and DVR box by the door into the bathroom. I turned it on and watched Nichelson fuck my cousin, Hosea, in different, but as arousing, positions as he fucked me.

Totally exhausted, I dragged myself back to the bed, stretched out on my back, legs parted, arms stretched out into a cruciform, totally vulnerable and open to anything the glorious monster wanted to do with me. I fell immediately into the sleep of the dead, once more conjuring up the nightmare of the previous two nights. The scene was coming more into focus. This time the figure that lay on top of me, using me mercilessly and interminably, was all blackness in a billowing black cape. I was completely open and vulnerable to the cock pounding relentlessly inside me. I had an arm stretched out toward the floor, but still could not reach the displaced floorboards. Once again, the voice of Hosea was crying out, “No, don’t look. Beware! Leave! Escape!”

* * * *

The rhythmic thumping that was in the background of my nightmare moved into the forefront, became dominant, and I woke, on the black-sheeted bed in the room with the black walls, floor, and ceiling to the sound of drums and the hint of chanting in the near distance. Moonlight was streaming through the French doors facing the double-tower red-rock buttes beyond the back of Hayden Nichelson’s house, drawing me to rise from the bed and go to the moonlight.

The moon was so close and vibrant that I felt I could reach out and touch it. But beyond that the positioning was so perfect that the orb of the moon hung neatly and fully between the two red-rock pillars in the near distance. The sound, both the rhythmic beating of two or more drums and a low chant came from that position, and a swirl of activity was visible in the saddle between the two rock chimneys. A stone altar hovered there that I hadn’t noticed before and figures in black danced in slow, swirling motion around the alter. A nearly naked man—surely Hayden Nichelson from the magnificence of his Zeus-like body and his gray hair—stood, tall and proud, on the altar, a black cape billowing about him in the breeze that was flowing between the two chimneys. At his feet, on the altar, was stretched the figure of a naked young man. He was on his back, bound. A wedge placed under the small of his back raised his hips high into the air. His legs, the ankles bound to iron rings on the sides of the altar, were spread.

I had an impulse to go there—to see who was on the altar and what was about to happen to him, afraid, of course, that it was Hosea. I reached down and tried the latch on the French window and was surprised that the door opened. I turned, raced back to the closet, found and pulled on Hosea’s garishly decorated shirt and the briefs I’d found, returned to the French window, and slid out into the night, stealthily moving toward the All Hallow’s Eve ceremony being performed in the saddle between the buttes above.

When I had managed to get into a position from which I could observe the ceremony without being discovered, the warlock—Nichelson—had already mounted the young man bound to the altar. He only had to crouch slightly between the young man’s spread thighs to be in a position of deep penetration. He was covering the young man’s body from above and his black cape was swirling about him so that all I could see of their bodies were their faces, the wavy gray hair on the back of the warlock’s head and the face of his captive and sacrifice. What I could clearly see in the moonlight, though, was the connection between them—Nichelson’s almost monstrous erection moving in and out of the captive’s hole. The warlock grasped the captive’s hips between his hands, lifting the young man’s pelvis even higher off the altar. Nichelson was fucking the young man in long, deep thrusts. Witches in black robes swirled about the base of the altar in a dreamy-paced, undulating dance to the drums and the chanting.

I knew the face of the captive, of course. It was Hosea. The expression exhibited testing and passion and ecstasy. That he was being fucked hard, deep, and fast was evident from the undulating of the black cape covering them both. That he was transported to ecstasy was also evident.

The cadence of the drums increased as did the frenzy of the witches’ dance. Nichelson raised his body, standing proud, his cape now billowing behind him, his magnificent body highlighted in the moonlight coming through the gap between the stone towers. He was arching back, his hands on his hips. The connection between him and the captive bound to the altar—Hosea—now was total, relentless. His huge cock moved in and out of Hosea’s passage, picking up thrust and vigor until, with a cry to the heavens, the warlock arched his back, raised his arms to the moon, and released his seed—repeatedly in a draining that went on for nearly a minute.

The warlock tensed, jerked, and loudly declared, on a drum beat, a second release. And then a third. Hosea twitched and writhed, as he could within his bonds. He too cried out at each release—a cry of ecstasy. The warlock’s cum burbling out of Hosea’s hole and dribbling down the young man’s naked thighs. At the last thrust of the warlock’s hips, given when the cock was withdrawn and exhibited by a long arc of cum shooting onto Hosea’s belly, the drums stopped as did the dancers, frozen at the cry of his release.

After a long pause, the drums started again, but with a duller beat at greater intervals. The witches resumed their dance, but it too was less frenzied, the motion more fluid, less jerky. One of the witches walked toward the altar, a long-bladed knife raised, moonlight reflecting off the sharp blade.

“No,” I cried out, rising from my hiding place and rushing toward the altar. “No, not Hosea!”

I had not been hidden well. Three witches rose from near where I’d sprung up, grabbed me, and pulled me toward the altar. The witch with the knife had cut Hosea’s restraints as I was hustled toward the altar and he had rolled off to the side of the base and was bunched there in a trembling fetal position.

As he came off the stone slab, I was being raised to the altar. The briefs were being pulled off my loins, and I was being forced belly down on the wedge on the altar, my cheek on the surface the altar, my chest pressed into where the wedge descended to the marble top, and my buttocks raised to the top edge of the wedge. A bevy of witches secured my wrists and my ankles to hold me in place. The drums picked up the beat, the dance of the witches began again in frenzied earnest. The low chanting commenced.

The warlock, standing proud and still in regained full erection while the captive transitioned from Hosea to me; mounted me from behind; grasped my hips in his hands; penetrated with his never-withering erection, while I cried out in pain-passion at the stretching thickness and length of him; stretched me open in a long slide; immediately started to pump; and the sacrificial ceremony of the Moon Dance of All Hallow’s Eve began anew. I moved with him, digging my toes into the marble of the altar and meeting his thrusts with counterthrusts.

“Take me! Not Hosea. Me, not him. Make me the sacrifice! Yessssss!”

I cried out and writhed as I could as Nichelson buried himself deep in my core and fucked me and fucked me and fucked me to utter babbling exhaustion.

Well, at least I had found Hosea.

* * * *

“Hey, that’s my shirt, I think.”

“It most certainly is, and you can have it back just as soon as my clothes have been returned to me,” I answered.

We were sitting in Hayden Nichelson’s dining room, looking quite the motley group. Nichelson was wrapped in the black robe he’d worn to the Mood Dance ceremony just up the hill from the house. Hosea was wearing the loincloth he’d been escorted in to the ceremony from the nearby ranch where he’s been staying, having agreed to stay around to be in Nichelson’s ceremony, but having gone to stay with one of Nichelson’s neighboring friend’s house until that was over.

“I enjoyed being here,” he said, “but I could only endure it for a few days. The duties were just too taxing. Hayden was good enough to find me a place with Phil up the road until the ceremony was over. Phil fucks me, but . . . well . . . you know.”

“Yes, I most certainly know,” I said, looking pointedly at Nichelson sitting across the table from us and drinking coffee. He had a little smile on his face. He could hear us talking and we weren’t saying anything that he gave a shit about.

One of the witches, still in a black robe, was in the kitchen, making omelets for us. The image was ridiculous enough that I had trouble not laughing—a domesticated witch. It had been a long, rough night. Rougher on me—and Hosea—I’m sure than on any of the coven who had congregated here to worship the moon rising between the two red-rock pillars in back of the house on one specific night.

I was wearing the briefs I’d found in a drawer and Hosea’s Hawaiian-pattern shirt, unbuttoned and flared open. He only now had noticed I had it.

“We worried about you . . . I worried about you. Your mother sent me looking for you. You suddenly stopped calling.”

“I lost my cellphone,” Hosea said. “I had to get out of the last place I stayed in a hurry. I left most everything behind.”

“Yes, I know,” I said. “I’ve got your stuff outside in my car, including the cellphone. You can call us about your adventures now.”

“You’ve got my stuff? You don’t mean you’ve been to Carl’s house in Phoenix?”

“Yes, I’ve been to Carl’s house in Phoenix. I was there for a night.”

“And you made it out alive? Man, if I’d known you followed me there, I’d have warned you off. That guy’s crazy. He’s got this room behind his kitchen that’s a sexual torture chamber. He strung me up on an X-frame and nearly killed me. The thing was thumping against the wall to beat the band and he was torturing me with all sorts of sex toys. He was a maniac.”

“And yet you’re here,” I said. But this didn’t come as a surprise to me. I suspected something was going on in that room and that it had once involved Hosea and more recently the little Thai guy, Lek. And it all was connected to that nightmare I’d been having.

“I don’t know how I got away from him. He fucked me shackled over some sort of sawhorse thing and then strung me up on an X-frame and was going to whip me. I broke away, pushed him down, and managed to get out of the house with just the clothes he’d pulled off me. I don’t know why he didn’t follow me. He was a big muvva. If he’d caught me, he could have—and probably would have—beaten me to death.”

“He didn’t follow you because when you pushed him down, he broke his leg. You did try to warn me off, Hosea. And it worked.”

“What do you mean warned you off?”

“Never mind. It’s all too crazy to get into. I’m just glad I found you. Where do you go from here?”

“Back to Las Vegas, I think,” Hosea answered. “I don’t think I’m cut out for this houseboy with privileges life. The short-order cook job in a fancy restaurant is looking really good to me now. And you? Will you drive me back?”

“If you can hold on for a few days or so,” I said. “You said you could only take the job here with Hayden for a couple of days with all the demands it entailed.”

“Yes, so?”

“I think I’d like to see if I can last a few more days with him than you did.” I looked over at Hayden Nichelson, who was giving me a hard look. I could also hear the wheels spinning in his brain, going through his index of exotic, athletic, and demanding sex positions to try on me—at least that was what I was hoping was going through his mind.