Lighthouse in the Desert

I heard the hum of a well-tuned engine out in front of the restaurant and turned to the window to see who was gliding in. The car, a beautiful, new silver Porsche 911 Carrera, didn’t make it as far as a marked-off parking space before it stopped, at somewhat of an awkward angle, taking up two spaces. I paused with the thought of whether he’d parked that way on purpose to preserve his precious bodywork or if the car had given out on him. A gorgeous hunk—maybe in his forties but still in very fine shape—got out, took leather driving gloves off his hands, popped the hood, placed the gloves precisely on top of the fender, and fiddled inside the engine compartment. So, maybe it was car trouble after all. I thought the gloves defined his smart dress quite well, and the fact that he took them off to dip into the engine signaled how well he took care of his things—but that he didn’t shy away from dirtying his hands. The fancy cowboy boots were a nice touch.

He was a man’s man.

That he was driving a $100,000-plus car didn’t seem strange to me, even though we were out here in the Nevada desert on a lonely strip of Highway 95 between Mina Nowhere to the south in the direction of Las Vegas and Luning Nowhere to the north in the direction of Reno. We got a lot of nice sports cars pulling into the Lighthouse Restaurant, Motel, Gym, and Club despite being in the middle of Nowhere. We were the only full-service gay men’s support facility in western Nevada between Las Vegas and Reno. It might look like we were Nowhere, but we pulled in men from Nellis Airbase to the south, Yosemite National Park to the west, and Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot and the Walker River Indian Reservation—and even as far as Lake Tahoe—to the north. We had rooms. We had food and entertainment. We had rent-boys. We could make whoopy for a man’s man. Some guys made a weekend of it.

I watched as the hunk mussed around in his engine compartment for a few minutes, shrugged, and then lowered the hood, turned, and walked—no, more strutted—toward the restaurant entrance. He was a man’s man and he wanted everyone to know it.

I wasn’t alone in watching him saunter in. He was tall and muscular, handsome as the devil, and moved like he owned the world. If he owned that Porsche, he did, in fact, own a large chunk of the world. He was wearing a white dress shirt that fit his muscular torso like a glove and tailored dark-blue trousers. The gold threads in his obviously expensive silk tie reflected the light of the unrelenting sun overhead. Dustin, Chris, and Carlos had all gathered at the front windows to watch his progress. All were as good a grader of manflesh as I was, as the duties of all three—Dustin Stevens, Chris Drew, and Carlos Sanchez—were to serve men in every way, including, by day, as waiters in this restaurant. We didn’t really need three waiters in the restaurant, but we never knew when one of the guys would be culled off to ride a cock in one of the motel rooms.

The man approaching us was premium manflesh—just what any of us rent-boys were happy to go into one of the motel rooms with—and he seemed to be well aware of that. I was one of the four “servers” at the Lighthouse, but I was the senior one—both in experience and authority. I served as “host” in the restaurant, but also as manager of the motel and brothel end of the business and as the stage talent on Friday and Saturday nights in the club. I sold what I displayed. The club, in back of the restaurant, was in business Thursday night through Saturday night, but a guy and a motel room could be had any time of day or night of the week.

I wasn’t in charge of the whole operation. That would be Andy Marsan, who we all called Sarge. He ran the kitchen as well as all of the financial business. There was a revolving staff of two or three Hispanics or Native Americans to help him in the kitchen. And then there was Ian Hogan, another muscle-bound former sergeant, but not called Sarge like Andy was, who ran the gym attached to the north side of the Restaurant/Club building. The motel rooms, seven fronting Highway 95 and seven on the other side, facing a parking lot and a ten-stall parking building, where, for a price, patrons could park their cars behind vertical strips of rubber that hid the cars from view, ran off to the south from the restaurant/club building. Only three of the motel units were open to transient guests, units 1 through 3. Units 4 through 7, on the front, were for short-term service, with Dustin, Chris, and Carlos each having a room to use. The fourth room was used for blow jobs and quickies and sleep by the room attendant and young part-time rent-boy, Jacob Grimes. He was just out of high school up in Carson City and didn’t have the experience the other three had. He was just the small, pretty-faced kind of guy some customers liked to dominate, though, and it wouldn’t be long before he’d be riding the cocks like the best of rent-boys.

The three rent-boys/waiters had personal rooms on the motel’s backside. Two of the other rooms there were used by the kitchen staff for sleeping, and the two other rooms were storage. The gym manager, Ian, had his own studio unit off the back of the gym, where he also was available for patrons wanting to be covered by a power top. All and all, we were a complete man’s delight complex.

As the senior talent, I had a fancy circular room in the tower immediately above the club’s circular bar, but that wasn’t where I slept. Sarge’s apartment was above the restaurant. I slept with him there.

The tower was a replica of a lighthouse. That was the complex’s distinctive element. Rising above the restaurant building and from the middle of it, the replica lighthouse tower, complete with a bulbous revolving light at the top—a red light—could be seen for miles away in the flat-earthed desert. It was purposely phallic. “We service dick here” was its message.

The front of the long line of motel rooms, restaurant, and gym were painted white with a series of rolling blue waves running from south to north. The effect of driving through Nowhere in the desert and coming upon a lighthouse with rolling waves depicted along the base was certainly arresting. Everyone knew about the lighthouse north of Mina on Highway 95. Not everyone knew it was a gay cruising club in addition to a restaurant and motel, though. We’d rent motel rooms to anyone, making sure on each changeover that the condoms were retrieved from floor or trash basket, and our restaurant was the best place for anyone to eat for fifty miles in any direction.

Enough guys across the whole region knew we were in business, and what business we were in, though, that this was a lucrative operation even though being in the middle of Nowhere.

The commanding hunk hit the door with a big grin. The three waiters scattered about the room, looking like they were keeping to their own business, but I knew they were keeping tabs on the guy as he talked to me at the host’s desk. We weren’t exactly busy. If we relied on the restaurant traffic for business, we’d be out of business, and we very definitely were in a profitable business.

He won me over as soon as he came through the door. He grinned, looked me over from feet to the top of my sunny blond head, and said, “Nice.” Before I could ask him if he could afford me, which he clearly could, given his car and his clothes, he added, “A lighthouse? In the desert?”

“Sometimes we put a tea cup with water and half a peanut shell floating in it out front for the lighthouse to monitor,” I replied. It wasn’t an off-the-cuff response. We got the “A lighthouse in the desert?” question a lot. “It’s good for business. People notice it. Also, you notice that this stretch of highway between Vegas and Reno has a lot of this ‘eye-opener’ stuff on it. More in the 50s than now. Most of it has fallen down.”

“Speaking of fallen down,” he said. “I’m having car trouble.”

“So, you didn’t stop here just to taste lighthouse cooking?” I said. I was actually disappointed. I had assumed he had stopped here to taste the off-menu goods, and, although Carlos was the one who was up at the moment on walk-in traffic, I was already scheming to take this one myself. I’d already checked out his crotch, and he had distinct possibilities. I liked them big. If I was going to sheath one, I wanted to feel it. I could pull rank and expect no more than a bit of quiet grumbling from the batter who was up. But if he only stopped because his car stopped . . .

“I might have,” he answered. “What are the chances there’s a garage anywhere near here and AAA towing services?”

“You’re in luck,” I said. “There’s a guy in Mina, just south of here who tows for AAA, and his father has a garage, Cassidy’s Garage. He’s a good, reasonable mechanic too. So, you’re really in luck. I’ll call him for you, if you like.”

“I like, thanks.” He’d looked directly at me and emphasized the “I like.” I liked that a lot myself.

I placed the call. “Butch will be over in just a bit,” I said. “Business isn’t all that brisk for towing in Mina.”

“Butch? I heard you call him Butch. From Cassidy’s garage. Butch Cassidy?”

“Yeah, his parent were fans,” I said. “Wait till you see the tow truck. He named it Sundance. And there he is now.”

“Thanks,” the man said. “I’m Travis, by the way, from near Reno. Travis Tyler.”

Your name should be something more Greek; you’re a gorgeous god, I thought, as he sauntered back out to talk to Butch at his car. The three waiters drifted close to the windows again to watch him. “I’m up next,” Carlos called over to me.

Damn, I thought, Carlos remembers. “Yes, you are. I remember,” I answered. “The very next guy who comes in after this one is yours.” This was met with some of that harmless quiet grumbling.

We all watched as the man—Travis Tyler—talked with Butch. He stood real close to Butch; I knew that Butch would really like that. We may be at the end of the earth out here in the middle of a desert, but the lighthouse business had attracted some like-minded permanent residents.

After they’d jabbered a bit, the hunk went around to the trunk of the Porsche, opened it, and took out a small suitcase. I could hear the sigh from the guys across the restaurant when he did that. I tried the name in my memory banks but came up with no association—certainly of a past patron. Butch got back into Sundance and started maneuvering it around at the tail of the Porsche. Luckily, there was plenty of room. It was early afternoon. This was Friday. The patrons wouldn’t start arriving until 7:00 or after, and then only those who wanted to eat dinner here before partying in the club in the back. And most club patrons parked in the back anyway. The closeted ones paid extra to park in the covered slots with screening on the entrances.

Tyler left Butch to get the Porsche on the flatbed and glided back into the restaurant.

“He has to take it to the garage to see what’s wrong,” Tyler said. “He said you’d have motel rooms available here. Do you have a vacancy until I can get the car back, Collin?”

I checked the reservations book, although I didn’t really need to. There were the three rooms at the end in the front. None were booked for tonight yet. The other four rooms could be made available for anyone who stayed later than our 2:00 a.m. closing and were too drunk to drive—and who didn’t mind the lingering smell of male sex in those rooms. And, as they invariably were the guys who had created the smell in the first place, we never got complaints.

“Sure, we have a room. Carlos,” I said, turning to the three waiters standing across the room with their tongues hanging out. “Could you take Mr. Tyler to unit 1, please?” I was reluctantly giving way to Carlos’s rights. He was a goldmine for us, and I wanted to keep him happy in that role.

Carlos was Johnny on the spot, picking up Tyler’s suitcase, grinning at the man, and wagging his tail like a puppy. Tyler put a hand lightly on the rent-boy’s back as they walked off and I could see Carlos trembling. You wouldn’t know he was a hardened and lucrative rent-boy, although he wasn’t the most experienced one here, I acknowledged. That would be me, followed by Dustin.

My eyes narrowed as they walked off, though. There was a new, mysterious wrinkle here. Tyler had addressed me as Collin. That was my name, Collin Greene, but I hadn’t given Tyler my name. So, he’d walked in here knowing my name. It’s wasn’t just anyone who was named Collin. I didn’t wear a nametag. There was no plaque here proclaiming who the restaurant host was.

I gave it twenty minutes and when Carlos hadn’t returned, I went into the office between the restaurant kitchen and the club area, turned on one of the monitors in the bank of TVs above the desk, and dialed in the camera pointed at the bed in unit 1. Sure enough, they were both naked on the bed. Tyler was doing Carlos in a missionary on the bed and Carlos looked like he was having a special time, clutching Tyler’s shoulder tips with fingers that flexed to the rhythm of Tyler’s thrusts and moving his hips with the stroking of the cock inside him. His face was turned toward the camera and displayed a dreamy, well-fucked look. The point of penetration could clearly be seen. Tyler had an extra thick one and he was moving it with power, penetrating all the way—a very long way—and bringing it back to the tip before burying it again. Carlos clearly was in heaven. For a rent-boy to be having a special time was really something. Carlos liked big cocks, and Tyler was taking him in long slides, in which his cock came almost entirely out of the little brown Hispanic’s hole before sliding deep inside again.

Tyler was a fucking god. He had a body that was as magnificent as I had fantasized when I first saw him. He had a piece to admire and he had a technique, holding Carlos expertly in his embrace, and fucking him hard and fast and deep, that marked him as a real pro at it. They’d been at it for a while. As I watched, Carlos fairly collapsed within the man’s embrace, letting his arms dangle and turning his head to the side again after they had French kissed and letting his tongue hang out and his eyes glaze. He’d let himself go totally open to the man, which rent-boys were counseled not to do. Tyler just continued pumping him until I saw him tense, pull out, rip the condom off, rise up Carlos’s torso, and arc his cum onto Carlos’s face.

I wished I had offered the “free-service for the right to broadcast the video to select patrons” deal with Tyler before turning him over to Carlos. We would have made a fortune off this.

I sat down at the computer on the desk, opened a tab on the patron in unit 1, marked billing for one night, and added in a full-service fuck. I’d run his card when I’d assigned the unit. Now I’d check his credit to make sure he could manage what I was fairly sure would be a big tab here. I’d like to be able to discover more of who he was than his credit standing. There was some reason he was here. He knew my name.

Most of all, I wanted to have a turn with him. I wanted to have that silly, fully taken look on my face that I saw on Carlos’s face on the TV monitor. That didn’t happen to me much with a john anymore. There were so many fat toads we had to serve here that when a prince went through, we all sniffed the air and raised our tails.

* * * *

Although Andy Marsan—Sarge—put up all the money for the Lighthouse business, we worked on it together, he and I. Six years ago I arrived at Begram Airbase in Afghanistan, a raw recruit for the military police unit there, and Sarge was already there and had been for two tours, functioning as a sergeant. Ian Hogan also was there as a sergeant. Both of them took me under their wings, both of them trained me, and both of them bedded me, but only Andy saved my life. The Taliban launched an assault on the base one night when we were standing guard at the entrance shed. We fired back, but when they cut the shed to shreds with automatic weapons fire and we’d done all we could, Sarge pushed me down on the floor, covered my body, and took a couple of bullets before it was all over and the Taliban had been repulsed.

Since then, it was all about Sarge and me. He’d had enough. I’d had enough before I even got to Afghanistan. We came out of the service together and started up this business. I would have gone anywhere with him, if he wanted me. He said and demonstrated that he did. The restaurant building and motel wing were already here. We made it an attraction by building the lighthouse, making it unabashedly look like an erection, and putting the club on the back of it. When Ian came out of the service, we tacked on the gym for him.

Sarge recovered from the bullets to the back, but not fully. He moved around with sort of a shuffle and he wasn’t as athletic in bed as he was when we were in Afghanistan. But we managed, when we could both get into the mood and when I hadn’t already been used to capacity. Especially on Thursdays through Saturdays, there was a lot of work for Sarge to do and manage and a lot of work and fucking for me, so we usually just fell into bed sometime around 3:00 a.m. and did no more than cuddle on those nights. We tried to fuck a couple of times of week, and, in doing so, I’d learned all of the cowboy positions there were, I’m sure, Sarge taking his one comfortable position in sex—on his back and stretched out—and me riding his cock. He had a very nice cock. He’d gotten that bad back from saving me. I’d ride his cock in a cowboy whenever he wanted me to.

So, how that came into play was that it was Friday afternoon and we were ginning up for club night and I found Sarge in the office doing paperwork. I casually dialed through the motel room monitors—we had cameras showing various locations in the rooms, primarily the beds and the showers, and we’d put them in for security of our guys to make sure they weren’t being murdered by johns, but, yes, we sometimes indulged in watching the sex. We didn’t do anything more with the films and erased them within days—unless we’d made deals in advance with particularly good-looking or studly johns to broadcast them out to a select number paying patrons. We didn’t want to get into the sort of shit or suffer the possible consequences of having done so without permission. Of course, when we’d spied a great performer when we were flipping through the dials, sometimes we’d offer them contracts to perform on film. More than sometimes the stud was happy to do it.

I stopped trolling when I brought up coverage of the bed in unit 1 of the motel—the one I’d rented to Travis Tyler while his Porsche was being fixed. I hadn’t told Sarge yet of my concern that Tyler already had known my name when he’d first arrived.

They were on the bed, Tyler and Dustin. Dustin was the more inventive and experienced of the three regular rent-boys we ran. He was giving Tyler a special ride now, and Tyler’s experience was really showing through too. Tyler had fucked one of the rent-boys, the Hispanic Carlos, as soon as he arrived, and now, just a few hours later, he was fucking the New York former dancer, Dustin. He was moving through the staff quickly.

They were doing what we referred to as the crab. Tyler was lying on his back, and Dustin was suspended over him, facing up at the ceiling—and the camera, for that matter. Dustin knew to reflect in his facial expressions how good he was getting it, and on this day Dustin’s face said he was getting it really, really good.

Dustin’s feet and the palms of his hands were planted on the mattress on either side of Tyler’s body, Tyler was holding Dustin’s waist in his hands, and Dustin was rising and falling on Tyler’s cock in rhythm to Tyler thrusting up into him. This took considerable athletic prowess and flexibility on the part of both of them, and they both were handling it masterfully. The expression on Dustin’s face, clearly captured by the camera, revealed that Tyler was in deep and fucking him good and hard.

I called Sarge’s attention to the fun and games and he pulled me into his lap. We hadn’t had an opportunity to fuck for a week. Sarge pawed me as we watched Tyler and Dustin fuck and I knew that Sarge and I would be taking a break this afternoon to do the same.

As we watched, the position changed to an even more challenging one, where Tyler lifted Dustin’s body up over his and Dustin placed his right foot on Tyler’s bent right knee and suspended his other bent leg in the air as Tyler raised and lowered him on the cock. This transitioned to Dustin on his back on the bed, with his legs jackknifed over his shoulders, and Tyler standing over him and fucking down into his channel.

“He’s really putting Dustin through his paces,” Sarge said.

“Yes, yes, he is,” I answered, the “putting him through his paces” starting me to give thought to Travis Tyler’s visit here. The two men seemed to be going through a series of challenging positions, as if Dustin was purposely showing the man what he could do. But I had other things to think about at the moment. Sarge had unzipped me and released my cock and was stroking me off as I sat in his lap. “Speaking of being put through the paces . . .” I said.

“Yes, I want to take you upstairs,” Sarge said. “I can’t manage those paces, but . . .”

“But we’ll think of some good positions. I’ll do the work,” I said. Watching the two on the monitor cycling through taxing positions had gotten my juices and my own thoughts of what Sarge and I could do going.

“But before we go upstairs.”

“Sarge. Oh, god, Sarge,” I called out as he lifted my buttocks, set my hole on his cock head, and pulled me down on his shift. I sprawled forward on the desk, no longer looking at the monitor, and, using the leverage of my feet on the floor, rose and fell on Sarge’s cock, as he slapped me on the buttocks and stayed hard for me to an ejaculation.

Later we did go upstairs, we did take a break from setting up for Friday club night, and I did manage to go through some pretty sexy paces with Sarge.

* * * *

We had a system with the club that was working well. We were open for clubbing and gambling 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Thursday was more for regulars who wanted to gamble and maybe couldn’t wait until Friday for sex. There was no entertainment that night. On Friday and Saturday nights I danced the pole for three twenty-minute spots, starting off slow and working to a flash finish, and maybe, if the crowd was large and enthusiastic, Dustin did a couple of turns as well. I had trained for it in Las Vegas right after returning home from Afghanistan and Dustin had been a dancer in New York. Dustin, Chris, and Carlos waited tables, flirted with the patrons, and went off with them when the necessary chips were presented. Most of the chips, sold by Sarge, who glowered over the club area, were for an hour. Dustin’s chips were red, Chris’s blue, Carlos’s white, and mine gold. There were black chips for Jacob, but they were only for fifteen minutes, as he was for blow jobs and quickies only. A silver ship was for all night with whoever accepted it.

Ian functioned as the bouncer, spending most of his time in the gym, as that was open during club hours too. The Hispanic kitchen workers worked the bar and food service. They weren’t formally available for servicing, but we looked the other way if they wanted to earn some money that way and got their regular duties covered—in other words, if they kept it mainly to hours outside the club hours. As long as they kept their motel units clean and didn’t scream down the place, we left them to it. Some patrons out here on the desert preferred Hispanics, and we were happy to scratch their itches. If the Hispanic worker used our rooms, we got a percentage of his take.

That Friday night we served a pretty full dinner crowd in the restaurant. Travis Tyler was there. After dinner I noticed that Chris Drew wasn’t around to do cleanup. I went into the office and turned on the monitors for unit 1, and, sure enough, Tyler was fucking Chris. I billed for it in the notebook. Chris would report it—they all were honest that way—but I wanted to make sure it was recorded. Tyler was adding up quite a bill already. He also had magnificent stamina, I had to admit. The camera picked up two spent condoms on the floor next to the bed.

I could hear them through the microphones in the room, but I couldn’t see them on the bed. The camera directed at the bathroom door, with was left open, caught them, though. Tyler had Chris bent over the toilet and was fucking him. Then he put Chris into a bully position, lifting him up off the ground, draping Chris’s body in front of him, and putting the young man in a full Nelsen. Chris had his legs wrapped back around the man’s calves, and Tyler was fucking up into him in powerful thrusts. Chris looked and sounded like he was getting more out of Tyler than he got out of most johns. From there Tyler walked Chris into the shower and I couldn’t see anything anymore. I could hear Chris getting it good, though. As long as his screams were including the word “Yes,” and “Fuck me,” he was good for ravishment.

So, that was all three rent-boys on our roster in one day. Everyone but me. It was almost like he was auditioning us.

Travis Tyler didn’t leave me out, though. I did my last set on the pole at 1:00 a.m. Tyler had been in the club, sitting and watching and drinking, since 11:30, so he’d caught the set I’d done before the last one. Chris came back, not fully recovered, after midnight. He was walking bowlegged, but he had a silly grin on his face. He almost immediately was taken away by another john. I felt sorry that he had another one so soon after Tyler, but business was business.

Tyler sat and watched me. He watched me moving around the club even when I wasn’t on stage. I’d stripped down all the way on stage before the lights went out, so he’d seen what I had to offer the world, if only at a glance. The four of us rent-boys didn’t wear much as we floated around the club, but it was more than I was wearing on stage at the end of my sets. We had sort of a cowboy motif off stage—fringed deer-hide briefs and the hint of a vest, pinto-pony-hide chaps, and cowboy boots.

When the lights came back on at the end of my 1:00 set and I’d pulled my briefs back on, Tyler was standing there, a terse little smile on his face, holding four gold poker chips in his hand. That represented $1,200 in services—four hours. I looked up to the back of the club, and Sarge was standing there, looking down at the stage. Our eyes met, and he just shrugged. What could we do? Business was business. I’d drawn his attention in the afternoon to Tyler humping Dustin like a pro, but I hadn’t spoken to Sarge about having questions about the man. I hadn’t told Sarge that Tyler had also fucked the other two rent-boys and that he knew my name when he arrived.

“I would have bought a silver one, but the big dude up there wouldn’t sell me one for you,” he said, giving me an intense look. That would have set him back two grand. Silver chips had almost never been brought into play here. This wasn’t Vegas.

“That’s good to hear,” I said.

“It’s important for me to know whether you’d go with me. Your boys have told me we were on camera earlier today. Would you have taken me all night?”

“Yes,” I said without hesitancy. “But I have responsibilities at the club. I can’t take off that long. Sorry.”

“Good to know,” he said, as I accepted the four gold chips.

What was this guy up to? What if it was the cops, I wondered. Had Sarge paid up where it counted? Was there something federal we hadn’t considered? Would it be worse if I didn’t honor the chips than if I did? And did I really want Tyler on top of me? I’d watched him totally fuck the other three guys. Could I deny that I wanted some of that from him myself? How would he fuck me? Could I take four hours of it?

Shit. What was I thinking? I would be happy to take him all night.

He fucked me for almost continuously for three hours, as it turned out. Nothing too fancy, just a total taking in zinging versions of conventional positions that permitted full access and depth. And I loved it.

I had a better working environment than the other three rent-boys. They were using motel rooms that were well-appointed—fixed up nicer than their personal rooms on the reverse side of the motel wing. I had a larger room, circular except for the oblong area set off for a fancy bathroom. A staircase wound around the back of the serving area of the circular bar in the base of the lighthouse and set off in the corner of the club room. My “entertainment” room was in the next level up in the lighthouse. There were two other levels above my room and below the revolving red light at the top. We used those for storage of our more expensive stuff and our more sensitive business records—like the second set of books that told the more honest story of our bottom-line profit. My room was set up as an Oriental harem room, complete with Oriental carpets everywhere, rich brocades and silks, lots of pillows, and a circular bed in the center. The ceiling and large areas on the walls at the sides of the bed were expanses of mirrors.

I don’t know what Tyler did with the other three in foreplay as I had caught them all well into the action, but he nearly wiped me out before he ever put his dick inside me. He gave me a lot of intimate attention and demanded I give it to him as well. We didn’t use up all of the four-chip time in all, but we came close. His work under my balls with his tongue and lips alone brought me off the first time.

When he got down to the fucking, he took me in a doggie to start with—but an advanced form of it, using what we called the bulldog—with my rump raised high and him riding me almost standing over me and taking me in long, strong thrusts with his hands gripping and squeezing my waist. In this position, he got power behind his thrust. He did a missionary, but not just a straightforward position. He did me, face to face, while holding my right leg rising up his torso and then in what we call an afternoon delight, with him standing beside the bed, and me supporting myself on palms pressed under me into the mattress, and my body hovering off the bed and being swung back and forth by the strength of his thrusts inside me.

I think in all he overstayed his four chips but at the point the official time had expired, I was asleep, in his arms, lulled to sleep by my low moans and the languid movement deep inside me of his cock.

I manage to push myself back into the world to find him stretched out beside me, his head propped up on by his bent elbow, looking into my eyes, and making little circular motions around one of my nipples with the tip of his index finger.

“If you’re not done, I could spend the night,” he whispered.

“I’m beyond done,” I managed to croak.

“Then my work here is done.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You weren’t the first of the day. I’m wiped out.”

He laughed. “Maybe sometime I can have you alone for a day.”

“I’m not sure I could survive that.”

He laughed again. “It’s something to think about.” And then he was a good boy. He rolled off the bed, cleaned himself off with a washrag in the adjacent bathroom—not closing the door so I could watch him move that gorgeous body of his—and then dressed and left.

This was my cue to get up, take a shower, and go back downstairs to close the place up. But I couldn’t move a muscle. I never made it back into Sarge’s bed that night, and the atmosphere from his direction was a bit frosty toward me the next day. He found work he had to do that didn’t permit me to have a discussion with him. When I tried, he just said, “Business is business. You do what you have to do. But if he stayed the whole night—”

“He didn’t. He paid you for four hours and that’s what he got from me.”

That mollified Sarge at least on the surface. But I didn’t think he was fully able to accept that what Tyler and I were doing was fully covered by what I had to do in this business. To be honest, I don’t think I could claim it was either.

I had been royally FUCKED by Travis Tyler.

* * * *

“You know you could be making more money with this? You’re really good.”

So, that’s what this is about, I thought. I’d been riding Travis Tyler’s cock at the two-hour point on Saturday night in my Arabian Nights lighthouse tower room. He’d really put me through my paces. Tonight was mostly about floor exercises, with Tyler fucking me in every standing position I’d ever known about and plowing me against every wall and dresser surface he could find in the room. I’d gone with him in all of it—and enjoyed it—although at some point it’s just more dick-in-hole action.

Some johns did dick-in-hole action a lot better than others did. Tyler did dick-in-hole a lot better than those who were good at it did.

He knew how to edge—both of us.

“I make it hand over fist here,” I answered, referring to money earned. I was earning a lot from him just now. I rolled off him, sat on the side curve of the bed, and reached for a pack of cigarettes on the nightstand. He’d come at last. I’d already fired off a few times—enough that my balls ached. He rolled the spent condom off his cock and sent it flying over the other side of the bed, to join others from earlier in the session on the expensive Oriental carpet on the floor over there. He’d been insistent with shoving his gold chips at me after my first set on the stage downstairs in the club, and the music was coming up from there through the air vents.

“I have to go do a show,” I said. “I’ve missed the midnight one.”

“Did you really miss it?” he asked. “You’d prefer doing that to me doing you?”

“Don’t fish for compliments,” I said. “You know you don’t have to.” And, in fact, I was in awe of his ability to fuck me in so many athletic positions over two hours after going through the three other rent-boys here during the previous day in addition to whatever he and Butch, the AAA tow truck operator, had done. Butch had shown up in a car in the afternoon and Tyler had gone off with him for more than two hours. That was more time than they needed to consult on what was wrong with Tyler’s Porsche. If anything was wrong with it. It was probably time enough for Tyler to get a hefty discount on the Porsche repairs, though.

“Did your Porsche really break down here?” I asked.

“No. My Porsche is in great shape—always was.”

“So, it’s not happenstance you’re here at all, is it?” I asked.

“Not at all. A new men’s ranch club is opening up outside Reno. It’s going to be a very big deal. Like the Mustang Ranch, but exclusively with male talent. It’s called Stallion Station. I’m a recruiter. We need talent. You’ve got talent. I’m sure you can do better there. Think about it. The Cassidy kid will have my ride back to me at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. I let him make me think it needed some work. That’s when I roll. I want you to roll with me.”

“I’ve got another set to dance now,” I said, standing and turning toward the bathroom and the fancy shower I had in there.

“But you’ll think about it?”

“I’ll think about it,” I said. “I’m going to take a shower now.”

“You want company?”

“If I say ‘yes,’ I’ll be fucked again, won’t I?” I said, turning my face to him and giving him a wry smile to let him know I wasn’t ticked that he was trying to grab me away from the Lighthouse Club.

“Yep.”

“Then yes.”

And he was right. We went to the shower, he fucked me up against the tiled wall under the cascading water, and I didn’t make it to my 1:00 dance set until 1:30. But I was clean—and well fucked. It was fine to arrive late. The men had waited for me with their tongues hanging out and probably appreciated the release of tension when they finally got their eye candy.

* * * *

Travis Tyler didn’t leave until 9:30 the next morning. He kissed Butch when Butch showed up with the Porsche on Sundance and unloaded it in front of the restaurant. So, the question of whether he’d had Butch as well was answered. I think he’d had Jacob, our “in-training” rent-boy, too at some point, from viewing the way Jacob was mooning over Tyler as he was clearing out of his room.

I wasn’t in the restaurant. I was upstairs at the bedroom window—our bedroom, Sarge’s and mine. Sarge was still in bed, mellowing out from a morning fuck he no doubt had not expected, but certainly hadn’t turned down.

Tyler didn’t leave alone. He took Dustin with him. So, Tyler’s stopover here in his recruitment trip for the Stallion Station ranch being put in place outside Reno wasn’t in vain. Other than losing Dustin, I didn’t think having another gay club and brothel that far away would hurt our Nevada business too much.

I’d tell Sarge about losing Dustin later, although Dustin might get to Reno and see that he was better off here than there. There he’d be just one in a large stable; here he was a star. If he came back and we hadn’t replaced him by then, we’d take him back, no questions asked, of course. He was good and he fit in here. He wasn’t a prima donna about anything. I’m sure Tyler wouldn’t have taken him if he didn’t agree.

I didn’t know when or if I’d tell Sarge that I’d been offered a job. He’d probably have told me to go if it was a move up for me. Tyler had, in fact, offered me star billing. I didn’t want to even think about whether it was a move up. When I thought about any such move, all I could think of was us back in that guard shack at Begram Airbase in Afghanistan, with the Taliban making mincemeat of the shack with incoming rounds and Sarge lying on top of me, trying to keep my body covered—trying to give me life in sacrificing his own. Just because I was a whore didn’t mean that I wasn’t a human being, capable of loyalty for sacrifice. Every time I saw Sarge limp across a floor, I was reminded what he already had done for me.

As I watched the Porsche raising dust behind it as it sped north up Highway 95 out of the Lighthouse Restaurant, Motel, Gym, and Club front parking lot, I let the curtains come together again and climbed back onto the bed—and on top of Sarge.