Going Down

Nick, or at least he was going to be Nick on this gig, walked this way and that way four times across the width of the apartment house street front and still couldn’t see how to get into the damn building. With an irritated sigh, he took out his cellphone and made a call. The guy on the other end of the call laughed, said it was a common problem, and said he’d be down in a couple of minutes to escort Nick up to the party apartment. When the guy appeared, Nick about lost his cool. He was a cop. He had appeared from the alley next to the building.

He wasn’t really a cop, he quickly said when he saw the expression on Nick’s face. He laughed again. “I guess a cop is the last thing a gay rent-boy wants to encounter on the night you’re doin’ a party and the party is doin’ you,” he said. “I’m not really a cop. This is Josh’s birthday party you were engaged for, but it’s also Halloween, so me and the guys decided to do it as a costume party. We have a costume for you to wear too. My name’s Ted. And I’m not surprised you couldn’t find the entrance to the building. It’s around the side. Follow me. Shit, you’re a good-looking dude. Slim hips, though. Hope you can manage the guys. How many times did we sign up for? I’d like a crack at you myself.”

“Let’s get something straight before we go to this apartment,” Nick said. “I’m not gay. I do gay for pay, but you get only what you contract for. Tonight I’m good for some sexy dancing, and it’s all just for the birthday boy. Others can watch, but they can’t touch. If they touch, I walk out and no refunds. I don’t do drugs and if they get into heavy use in the room, I’m gone. A lap dance for him, and I’ll blow him or he can blow me. And one fuck, top or bottom, his choice. But I’m not gay nor will I put out otherwise at a gay party. I’m just gay for pay and I don’t act like I enjoy it. This was all explained to whoever made the contract.”

“That’s all? No other blowjobs? Even for pay? Just the birthday boy?”

“Not for what’s being paid. It’s a third up front, a third after the sex, and a third before I leave, a credit card in this machine, and don’t try any fake card crap. We know where you live. And no messing outside the deal with me or I take a hike and they charge the card double. You complain to the credit card company, and we tell them what the service was for. We got an understanding on that? Why in the hell is the entrance off an alley? Isn’t this what they say is the gayest apartment house in the city?”

“Do we have to pay for the attitude too?” Ted asked.

“Sorry,” Nick answered. “It was frustrating trying to get into this building.”

“Yeah, well, it can be as frustrating to get out of too,” Ted said. “Once you’re inside it’s interesting, though.”

Interesting?

They had made it around to the side and entered a hallway, taking several turns before reaching an atrium with an open circular staircase going up to the top of the building.

Ted laughed. “I knew I’d have to come down to get you. You couldn’t find it even if you found out how to get into the building. It’s on the sixth floor. The building originally opened on the next street over, but this was considered a better street address even though there was no entrance on this side. There isn’t any entrance on the other side anymore either.”

“Weird,” Nick said as they started up the stairs.

“Weird and queer,” Ted said. “Yes, this is the gayest apartment house in the city. Nearly everyone’s gay—except for the original tenants who won’t leave. And the building was built in the 1920s, so the original tenants have gotten pretty moldy. The guy to watch out for is Simon, though. You see him in the hallway, run for cover.”

“Simon?”

“Yeah, they say he’s a vampire and has a torture chamber in the basement, but no one is sure because no one’s gone down there with him and come back alive.”

“Terrific,” Nick said.

“Well, we’re doin’ Halloween here tonight—not just Josh’s birthday.”

“You said this is on the sixth floor?” Nick said, as they started to climb stairs. “Isn’t there an elevator? They had those in the twenties.”

“Yes, there’s an elevator. No one has risked it in years, though. And, yes, the sixth level is the classy floor—as floors here could be called classy. It gets less desirable—fewer desirable guys—as you descend floors. The descending guys go down on the upper-story guys, you might say.” Ted chuckled. Nick didn’t

“The place goes down in class until you get to Simon’s torture chamber in the basement, I suppose.”

“You got that right. Say, you really are a dreamboat. How much to you charge separate from the contract for a blowjob?”

“I told you, I’m not really gay. I don’t like doing stuff outside what I was told was in the contract.”

“Yes, fine, but now much for a blowjob outside of the contract?”

“Seventy-five,” Nick said. “If off the books. The agency would charge a hundred.”

“Good to know. Here we are, Apartment 69. You can hear the party, but the partying’s gonna go up several notches when you get in there. The apartments don’t go up that high in numbers on the floors, but Josh paid extra to get 69.”

Nick didn’t bother to laugh. He was gathering himself for the job to come.

Ted opened the door to a small living room overrun with men in costume—or wearing nearly nothing—and an atmosphere heavy with false conviviality and pot smoke. There had to be a dozen in the room, but they weren’t holding still, so it would be impossible to count—and a few were fused together to make it equally hard to count how many were in the bundle. The music was going and they all were yapping, but they immediately stopped and looked at the doorway where Ted and Nick were standing. A sigh went across the room. Nick obviously was welcome, and the party, focused on him, was about to start in earnest. Nick clearly was the best thing to happen to this party.

Nick was walked to a couch where an older guy, seeming costumed as a sultan, was sitting. He was wearing a silk robe and turban and obviously nothing else. The robe was slitted in front, showing his naked body from neck to dick. He wasn’t in bad condition for his advanced age. He was a little overweight and well past his due date on looks, but he wasn’t as bad as Nick had steeled himself to find. He was getting personalized attention from a young, effeminate male sitting on either side of him, both in makeup and cotton frocks. One was fisting the man’s cock and the other sucking the bulb of the cock with lip-sticked lips when Ted and Nick entered, but they stopped and sat back, giving Nick a very interested look, when he was guided into the sultan’s presence.

“The birthday boy, Josh,” Ted said, introducing Nick to the pseudo sultan. “This is his birthday, or so he’s been telling us for weeks. You’re his present from the rest of us.”

Nick looked around the room. All eyes were on him. Those present seemed to be split into three categories: a few older guys Josh’s age, a few bruiser types in their late twenties or early thirties, and then a bevy of very young twinks and transvestites. Ted made a quick introduction but only naming the older guys and bruisers—the others weren’t given any regard, but they didn’t show any resentment. They were drinking someone else’s booze and inhaling someone else’s pills. Some of them had found their way into the apartment house at some point and hadn’t yet found a way out. With luck, they’d all be laid really well while they were here and wouldn’t get a bill for the booze and pills. For a few of them, it was a roof over their head for a night when they’d had no idea there would be one.

The more desirable of the lot from first assessment were Mike, a bodybuilder bruiser dressed as a cowboy, but the best-looking of the lot; Clayton, an older guy cross-dressed as a clairvoyant; Drake, an older but in-shape guy playing fireman; and Ivan, a glowering bruiser dressed as one of Mussolini’s storm troopers.

“Come back into the bedroom,” Ted told Nick after cursory introductions were made. “We got a costume for you.”

A thin guy dressed as a maid waltzed by offering a bowl of pills around. “Maybe just one,” Nick said and took one. He hoped it would loosen him up, and within minutes, it did. The party wasn’t looking half bad now.

Nick was going to be dancing at the party as an ancient Egyptian prince. There was a short, white linen skirt, a gold Egyptian head covering that fell down over his shoulders in shiny folds, sandals with gold lacings winding up to just below his knees, and an elaborate gem-encrusted yoke necklace on his bare chest. He actually looked terrific in it.

When he was dressed, he turned to look at Ted, who was looking at him expectantly and holding out a wad of cash. He also had his fly open and his cock out, wrapped in Ted’s other hand.

“What?” Nick said.

“You said seventy-five. I have eighty here. You can keep it all.”

“For the love of Christ, you want me to go down on you before we go to the party?” Nick asked. “I told you I was only queer for cash.”

“And here’s the cash. Going down is why you’re here. Before you get it on with Josh and dance for the guys out there would be a good time, yes. This would be off the books. You’re a real stud. I thought that . . .” He extended the hand and opened it to reveal a pink pill on top of the cash. “Just for the mood,” he said.

“Fuck,” Nick said. But he took and swallowed the pill. He went down on his knees in front of Ted. He took the erection in his hand and slid his lips down its sides. He simultaneously closed his other hand around the wad of cash in Ted’s hand.

Ted cupped Nick’s head in his hands, swayed his hips and murmured, “Oh, baby, baby, baby, you have a soft mouth. I knew you’d know how to do this good.”

* * * *

“What took you so long? Screw him yourself in there, did you . . . hubba twins, you’re one gorgeous Egyptian.” Josh said this as he lifted his head from taking a few lines of coke from a sheet of paper on the coffee table in front of him. Ted could see Josh wouldn’t be with them for very much longer, so he rushed the agenda.

“Whatcha want to do with the hooker, Josh? This is your party.”

“Turn up the music. Have him dance for us—and then me. Strip. Have him strip even though he’s mainly there already.”

The little guy dressed as a maid went by again and Nick took another pill. Everything was turning mellow and happy.

The music went up, a couple of the guys pulled the coffee table away, and they all gave Nick room to dance for them. He went into a sensuous routine that went with the music and was choreographed from a routine he did every other night in a gay strip club. It was a good, sexy, slow dance, and soon the great-looking bruiser named Mike was showing he knew some sexy hip-swaying dance movements himself.

There wasn’t much to strip other than the G-string Nick had on under the Egyptian skirt. When he’d started taking the skirt off, Josh had objected, saying he should keep that on and tease them with butt and cock shots. He made a real show of slipping that off his legs and flipping the skirt up to show he was bare underneath and had a very nice start on an erection. The guys loved it and clapped and wolf whistled their approval.

Mike got behind Nick, close, and they danced as one. Mike’s cowboy outfit included chaps and bikini briefs, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and a neck scarf—and nothing else. The two were quite the dance couple, and Josh was watching them intently, his eyes slitted, nearly blowing bubbles, fisting and stroking his own cock. The two twinks on either side of him were touching and kissing him.

The two real bruisers in the room were focusing on Nick. Mike had gotten an early start by joining him in the dance, but the thuggish-looking Ivan, decked out as a storm trooper, had stood in one place, in the shadows, from the time Nick had come back in the room and was giving the rent boy an intense “if I can just get you alone” stare down.

“Stop dancing for Mike before he fucks you right there and come give me a lap dance,” Josh said, his voice slurred.

Ted came up to Nick and whispered, “Whatever you have to do to get paid, I suggest you do it soon. When Josh checks out, he don’t give much notice. If he don’t get sex, we don’t give the full fee.”

Nick went to Josh, straddled his thighs, fisted his cock, and went into a lap dance. Josh ran his hand up under the hem of Nick’s skirt, wrapped his hand around the one Nick was gripping his cock with, and slow stroked him.

“Fuck me,” Josh murmured after a while. Nick had already moved his other hand under Josh’s tailbone and had a finger up his ass, opening him up, so, when Ted handed him a condom packet and a tube of lube, it wasn’t that long before he had Josh’s knees hooked on his hips and he was nestled into the man’s crotch, opening up the passage with his shaft. He’d flipped the front of the skirt up and made Josh crown his cock with the condom, with the other guys gathered round to take in the ceremony. As a teasing maneuver that was a real win in the room.

Josh had zoned out while Nick was fucking him, but Nick took it to his own release, which the contract specified that he do to get paid. With the help of the pills and with putting his eyes on Mike and pretending it was him, he didn’t find that too hard to do. Ted had Nick’s carding machine and paid him the first two of three installments. Everyone else in the room was either making a move on someone else or was already fucking him.

Someone in the room called out, “Let’s gangbang the Egyptian,” and Nick’s face showed a bit of concern for a moment.

But then, someone else cried out, “Shit! We’re outta beer.”

Mike appeared, saying, “I got a few more cases on ice in my apartment. If someone will help me carry it back, I’ll get it. You, Nick. Why dontcha come with me? Josh is out for the count now. Your work there is done.” He came in closer and said, “This might be the best time to escape.”

Nick gave him a grateful look and turned his eyes on Ted, the guy who seemed to be in charge since Josh was out of it. Ted just shrugged. Nick looked at Ivan, the only other guy in the room focused on the question. The storm trooper just drilled Nick with his eyes, signaling how he’d really like to drill him. Was he the guy who had suggested a gang bang, Nick wondered. Then he looked at Mike again, who was looking like a god in Nick’s pill-induced dreaminess.

“Sure, why not?” Nick said.

“I’m two flights down. The hallways here are confusing, a regular maze. You’ll have to keep close to me,” Mike said, as he went to the door.

“And keep an eye out for Simon,” Ted added. “It’s Halloween. Rumor has it he’s coming as a vampire and that somebody in the building will be drained of blood tonight.”

Nice, Nick thought as he followed Mike into the corridor and would have turned the wrong way, if Mike hadn’t put a hand on his arm to turn him. The hand on Nick’s arm made him shudder with arousal.

* * * *

Mike was right about the narrow hallways of the building being a labyrinth. The corridors twisted and turned, without them coming to the circular staircase Ted had used to bring them up to Josh’s sixth-floor apartment. Eventually, they came upon a narrow set of darkened stairs that descended, but only for one floor.

“Going down,” Mike called out as he plunged into the darkness. There was more twisting and turning in the halls on the floor below until they came to another staircase descending a single floor. “Going down again,” Mike said. “And here we are. Fourth floor. My apartment.”

It was while Mike was standing in the open doorway and letting Nick pass him that Nick noticed that Mike was carrying the clothes Nick had worn to the apartment house. Mike noticed that Nick saw them and said, “In case you don’t want to return to Josh’s party. I recommend that you not. The party was going to shit anyway. Here, you’ll like this one.” He offered a blue pill to Nick. Nick took it. He liked it because it increased his arousal vibe for Mike, not that they’d do anything about it. Mike wasn’t in the contract.

“I had one more payment that needed to be made,” he whined. Keep it all about being paid for it, he kept running in his mind.

“It’s been paid,” Mike said, holding up Nick’s card-charging device.

“You paid off my time?” Nick asked. “I suppose that means you want to lay me before we go back to the party.” Nick, in fact, was letting what he himself was thinking escape his mouth.

“If I lay you, you won’t want to go back to the party,” Mike said and laughed. “No, I don’t pay for sex. I used Josh’s card on it before we left, while you were kissing the guys off.”

“And I don’t give sex without being paid,” Nick said. “I’m not really gay. I’m purely gay for pay.”

“It looked like you were gay enough when you were fucking Josh,” Mike said. “You got it up while you gave him his lap dance. But we’ll see what you might do and whether you’re gay or not. I think you may be denying it too hard. Come on in. Get comfortable.”

Nick entered the apartment. It was neater than Josh’s place. Of course, it helped that there weren’t a dozen drunk and drugged-up guys wallowing in it. The furniture in the living room looked comfortable. The lights were set on romantic, and Mike clicked a remote and there was soft guitar music in the background. Nick walked around the small apartment, assessing it, looking at the sofa beckoning to him—to them. He shook his head. He didn’t come here for this. Be all business now, he admonished himself. He looked over at Mike, seeing him through a pill-induced haze. God, he’s a stud, Nick thought.

“Maybe we should grab the beer and get back upstairs,” he said. But Mike was stripping his bikini briefs off under the cowboy chaps, which he left on. Nick couldn’t help but gasp how hung the man was. This, plus the muscularity of the man’s torso, with him just wearing a kerchief around his neck had Nick going hard. He hoped Mike didn’t notice the tenting of the skirt of Nick’s Egyptian costume. But of course Mike noticed.

“I don’t have enough beer to be wasting any on the queens upstairs,” Mike said. “Let’s you and me have a little party right here. You want me to fuck you. Go over on the sofa and I’ll bring you a beer. Take that silly skirt off and get naked for me.”

“You’re sort of an arrogant bastard, aren’t you?” Nick said.

“Got me in one,” Mike responded. “That doesn’t mean you don’t want me to fuck you. I could tell that when we were dancing together up at Josh’s.”

“You willing to pay?” Nick asked. “I’m strictly gay for pay.” He named his rate.

“I told you I don’t pay for it, and I know you want this.” He was holding his shaft in his hand which was engorging nicely. “I also think you like being told what to do. Like I said, go over to the sofa, strip, and lay down for me. Open your legs and take my cock.”

It was a commanding growl, and it did, indeed, arouse and motivate Nick. Nick stripped off the skirt, and, while Mike pulled two cans of beer out of the refrigerator in the kitchen separated from the living area by a counter, Nick lay down on his back on the sofa.

“Just for a minute maybe. I’m tired,” he said.

Bringing the beers back, Mike said, “I told you to spread your legs. And lift your tail. I want to see your hole.” With a low moan, Nick complied. Mike laughed. “You’re a slack-hole whore and hard for it. Don’t tell me you aren’t gay. Touch yourself.” Nick touched his hardening cock and then moved down to touch his hole.

“Spread yourself with your fingers. Show me you can take my shaft.” Nick did so, trembling. No john had used him verbally like this before.

“Fuck yourself with your fingers. Yes, nice.”

Nick moaned as he rocked on two buried fingers. This was the pills making him give in like this, he told himself. But that wasn’t all of it. Mike was a sexy god. Nick wanted his cock.

Mike put the two cans of beer down on a coffee table. He reached down and rubbed a finger back and forth over Nick’s entrance, winning a shudder from the young man. He thumped the hole with his finger and Nick jerked and gasped. Nick grabbed Mike’s wrist.

“You want me to put it in, don’t you? You’re holding me to you, not trying to push me away. You want me to finger you and then you want me to fuck you. You’re not just a gay boy,” he said, “you’re a slut for it.” Nick gasped and jerked again, as Mike penetrated with the finger between the two Nick was spreading himself with. Nick groaned and rocked on the finger as Mike went deep. Mike touched the prostate and Nick’s cock stood up at attention. Mike ran two fingers of the other hand up the sides of the shaft and Nick shuddered and groaned.

“A real slut for it,” Mike murmured. Pulling the finger out, he came onto the sofa with his knees set down on either side of Nick’s waist.

“Go down on my cock,” he growled, hovering over Nick’s face and pressing the heels of his hands on either side of the rent-boy’s head on the arm of the sofa. He presented his very fine erection, and, grasping the man’s chaps-covered hips between his hands, Nick took the shaft in his mouth—and then in his throat, giving it deep suck.

“Nice. You do it good,” Mike murmured.

He reached over to the coffee table, coming up with a condom packet and a small bottle of lube. In time, he pulled out of Nick’s throat, and, still hovering over the rent-boy, rolled the rubber on his cock and lubed it up. “Put your ankles on my shoulders,” he demanded.

“For you, special. Just a hundred bucks,” Nick murmured.

“Not a chance, gay boy,” Mike said, with a laugh. “Put your ankles on my shoulders, whore. You want me to do you. If I walked away from you now, you’d be frustrated and disappointed. You’re a gay boy just like the rest of us.”

Nick realized that the man was right. He liked that he was being told to do. He wanted to be fucked. Not by just anyone. By Mike.

“Put your ankles on my shoulders,” Mike repeated. “You know how to do this.”

With a sigh, Nick did so. The cock head was positioned at the entrance. Nick gasped and gave a little yelp when Mike thrust up inside him, but he went into heavy breathing, low pants, and whispering, “Yes, yes, be good to me” as Mike set up a steady rhythm of deep thrusts and Nick adjusted to rocking with the fuck. Mike stopped moving his hips, letting Nick do the fucking motion. Nick’s hand moved between their bellies, and he stroked himself off, coming before Mike did.

They lay together, entwined, for a long time afterward, each fully aware of the other cooling down and going flaccid and then, as their hands roamed on the body of the other, each of them started to go hard again. Nick couldn’t do this. He needed to retain some scrap of distance between what he claimed and . . . this.

“I think I need to go,” he said.

“The party’s over by now,” Mike said, “I’ll see that your costume gets back to Josh. You couldn’t find your way there now anyway. And it’s up from here. You are only going down. I’m not done with you yet. I’m taking you back in the bedroom and fucking your lights out.”

“No rough stuff,” Nick said. “I don’t take it rough.”

“But you take it. You’re not straight. It’s not gay for pay. You’re gay.”

“Yes,” Nick said, after a pause. No use asserting that lie with this hunk.

“And you’ll take it rough if I give it to you rough.”

“Yes.”

“In fact, you want it rough.”

Nick didn’t agree with that, but then, he didn’t deny it, either.

“You’ll open your legs for me again for free—no pay. We’ll go back to my bedroom and we’ll fuck again. I’ll fuck you again. I’ll fuck you rough if I want to. Because you want it. Not because you’ll make money from it. You’ll beg me to put it in you. You’ll beg me to take you hard.”

“Yes.” He indeed was going down in the world. It had already been a journey of accepting reality in the descent through the labyrinth of hallways from the sixth to the fourth floors.

Mike laughed. He came off the sofa, reached down, took Nick up in his arms, and carried him into the bedroom.

The full cans of beer remained on top of the coffee table—untouched and getting warmer.

Mike fucked him vigorously, almost brutally in a closely plastered missionary again, Nick clutching the man on top of him, between his legs, nearly sobbing at the working of the hard, thick cock deep inside him, grasping Mike’s buttocks close into him, rubbing the backs of his knees on the rough leather of the chaps covering Mike’s hips as he bucked and bucked against the deep thrusts.

“You are gay,” Mike growled in his ear. “Say it.”

“Yes. Oh god. Fuck me. Fuck me hard.”

“Say it. Say ‘I am gay.’”

“I am gay.”

“I charge other men hundreds of dollars, but I go down on Mike and I give him my ass for free. Say it or I pull out.”

“I go down on Mike and give it to him for free.”

Mike laughed. He pulled Nick up from the bed and reversed him, Nick bending over the bed, his arms spread and his fists buried in the mattress. Mike mounted and penetrated from behind with a strong upward thrust that caused Nick to cry out. He palmed Nick’s belly with one hand, grasped his throat and arched the rent-boy’s head back into his chest with the other.

And he fucked Nick to his ejaculation in long, deep, brutal strokes.

* * * *

At the door to his apartment, Mike embraced Nick, who was now dressed in his own clothes except that he’d kept the gold Egyptian sandals with the gold strings winding up to under his knees. His own loafers had been lost somewhere and he liked the sandals and the lacings.

“Remember now, you are queer just like the rest of us. You aren’t in it just for the money. You like being fucked, probably rougher than I’ve done it. It’s fine that you can make money out of it, but you aren’t any better than any other guy who craves cock.”

“Yeah, sure,” Nick said. “Which way out of this dump?”

“Are you listening, Nick? Do you understand? You are not above anyone here.”

“Yeah, I heard. Which way? Where are the stairs? We’re on the fourth floor, right?”

“Yes, we’re on the fourth floor. The stairs further down are that way. Make two rights and you’ll see the staircase. Good luck, Nick,” he said, giving the young rent-boy a sad look and closing the door behind him as Nick moved off to the left and took the first right.

He found the staircase, but it only went down one level. He needed to go down four to get out of the building. He started down the corridor, looking for another staircase—hopefully the circular one in the building’s foyer that he’d used to get from the first to the sixth floor. Then he’d only have to try to remember how to get to the building’s alley entrance.

A door opened down the corridor and a man appeared. It was Ivan, the thuggish-looking bruiser who had given Nick the intense stare at the party. He was still in much of his Mussolini stormtrooper costume, with the jodhpur trousers, but he’d lost the brown shirt. He was bare-chested except for a black leather harness. His musculature was body-builder magnificent. He had a riding crop in his hand, which he snapped against the high tops of his black combat boots as Nick walked down the corridor toward him, the only direction in which Nick could go, and gave the man a little smile as he went to pass him.

Ivan reached out, grabbed Nick by the arm, and pulled him into the apartment, closing the door behind him and throwing three bolts. The apartment was dark and Spartan in décor. Otherwise, it was the same layout as Josh’s and Mikes’s apartments had been.

“So, you couldn’t stay away from me. You come to me to have Ivan work you over—to fuck the shit out of you. To dominate and punish you.”

Not really. At least not at a conscious level. Nick had just been trying to get out of the building. “I’m just trying to find out how to get out of the building,” he said. “I’m not looking for anything rough. I don’t do rough.” Well, unless that last fuck of Mike’s could be called rough.

“I think you do rough. I think you want to be punished. I think you want to go down on me.”

Nick reached for the door to leave, but Ivan spun him around, slapped him twice across the face, and pushed Nick to his knees. He had his shaft out quickly and slapped Nick again when Nick tried to refuse the cock in his throat. Ivan slapped him a couple of times on the cheeks with the heavy shaft. With a whimper, Nick settled down and gave the man’s cock head.

Before Ivan came, but when he was in full erection, he pushed Nick off the cock, slapped him again, and, while positioning the young man on the floor right there by the door on his all fours, he stripped Nick of his clothes, all except the golden sandals. Mounting Nick there on the floor, he moved into position, penetrated, and fucked him in a hard, vigorous doggy position, riding him like Nick was a mare and he a breeding stud stallion, cruelly grabbing Nick by the hair and pulling the rent-boy’s head back into his massive chest with one hand. The other hand was busy using the riding crop on Nick’s rump and flanks.

Nick gasped and panted and nearly sobbed, but he also went hard, moving a hand to stroke himself. When he came, splattering cum on the apartment floor, Ivan laughed.

“I knew you wanted it rough. I knew you wanted to be punished.”

Nick hadn’t known that. It was a revelation to him now that he, indeed, zoomed up the scale of arousal at the rough treatment and was walking on the clouds of sexual arousal.

Ivan dismounted and let Nick stand, but only to clip him in the jaw with one fist and bury the other one into the rent-boy’s lower belly, causing him to retch and double over. Ivan pulled him back off the floor by his hair, slung him over his shoulder, and took him into the bedroom.

The bed was a doubled one, with restraints rising from each corner. That’s not where Ivan took Nick, though. There was a wooden Saint Andrew’s cross X-frame against one wall. Nick writhed and bit into a rubber ball gag there as he hung on the frame and Ivan worked him over with a hand whip.

Again a satisfied laugh and an “I knew it” when Nick ejaculated during this treatment as well.

There was no relief on the bed, where Nick was bound, belly down, at all four corners and nearly bit through the ball gag and flopped around as best he could as, before mounting and fucking him from above, Ivan fisted him with a lube-covered glove.

None of this was anything Nick had done before. But he endured it, and even as it was happening, he realized it had him soaring above the clouds in arousal—and that he was worth much more as a rent-boy now, realizing that he could endure and perform for a man this cruel. His rates would go way up. He got hard as a rock from the treatment, so he had to admit that it sexually aroused him.

Ivan relieved Nick of the ball gag while he was still saddled on his ass, fucking him. “What do you think of what you want from men now, gay boy?” he demanded.

“Oh, shit. FUCK! Take me. Use me. Abuse me! I never knew it could be like this!” Nick cried out, having discovering what total sexual possession and use could be.

Ivan laughed and fucked on. “I should give you to Simon,” he whispered in Nick’s ear.

When the door to the apartment opened, Nick was expelled, naked, hit the opposite wall of the corridor, and sank in a heap on the floor. Ivan tossed his clothes on top of him.

“Out? How do I get out of this fucking hell?” Nick whimpered. He pulled his briefs and jeans on, but his back and chest had been whipped almost raw and the shirt would have been too painful to wear. He stuck it into his belt.

“Down is that way,” Ivan said, pointing off in the direction Nick had been walking when Ivan accosted him. “You enjoyed that. I knew you would,” he declared before he back into his apartment, and slammed the door shut.

As humiliated and in pain as he was, Nick could not disagree with that assessment. He trembled with arousal at what Ivan had done to him. It scared the hell out of him that he couldn’t, though.

* * * *

Struggling along, Nick eventually found another staircase. But it only went down one level, to the second floor. He sat down on the bottom step, covered his face with his hands, and worked at calming down so that he wouldn’t be frenzied in trying to find the next staircase.

“Going down?” a voice said, a low, silky-smooth baritone. Nick looked up. The guy was gorgeous, perfectly proportioned, dark and sultry. A Mediterranean Apollo, with silky dark hair, tight beard and mustache, and eyes. He had a great smile. He was dressed in black trousers and a silky black shirt, open nearly down to the navel, showing a curly-black hair pattern of swirling chest hair and a silver medallion hanging from a silver chain.

“Trying to,” Nick said. “Trying to get out of this fucking building.”

“You are wounded. Someone has been whipping you.”

“It was a misunderstanding,” Nick said. He shuddered as the man touch a rivulet of blood coming from one of the welts on Nick’s back. What he didn’t see was that the man took the drops of blood to his mouth and savored them.

“If you’re going down, I can help you,” the man said.

Looking at him again, Nick could see that that man wasn’t young, but he wasn’t old, either. There was some gray shot through his hair, but he was still gorgeous. The advances of age had been very kind to him.

“Here, just over here,” the man said. “These staircases are tricky, but they all go down. You could have taken any of them down.”

He gestured for Nick to stand and come around to the back of the staircase, where a panel opened to reveal that the stairs, indeed, did continue to descend.

“Come I will show you the way down.”

Nick followed the man—down one floor and then another and then another. About the time he thought they should be at the first floor, Nick realized that he’d lost count and that they must actually be lower than that. Another floor and then another and they were facing a steel door, which was open. The walls of the room beyond were cinderblock.

“Here, this way,” the man said, motioning Nick through a solid-steel door. Nick entered the room. He saw that there was another room beyond that. And then his blood froze when he saw the equipment in the other room—sexual torture equipment.

“I didn’t introduce myself,” the man said behind Nick as Nick heard the second metal door being closed and a key turned. “I’m Simon. We are going to have so much fun, you and I.”

Nick turned to see that Simon’s smile had changed. It was more of a sneer. The black eyes were flashing. Prominent were the fangs.