Madison Mills

Chapter Four: Healing

Nick was on his knees on the floor, his back to the side of his bed. Kumar Singh, naked under his open white lab coat, was standing on the floor, bent over Nick’s body, his arms spread, fists buried in the mattress of Nick’s bed. Beside his right fist was the final bandage he’d taken off Nick’s face and the surgical scissors he’d used to help him do so. A hand mirror was there too, the glass facing down. Nick hadn’t agreed to look into it yet. Nick was palming the doctor’s buttocks under his lab coat with his hands and squeezing them to the rhythm of Singh’s stroking of his long, thin cock deep in Nick’s throat. This was yet another installment of Nick’s plastic surgeon’s fee, coming at the point of celebrating the final reveal.

“What about my scar, though?” Nick had asked. “Should I be—?”

“You are good to do anything you did before the accident,” Singh said.

So, Nick gave Singh a blow job to celebrate the final bandages coming off his face.

Singh had declared the surgery a resounding success, and he was taking a full measure of his fee. He could have exploded in Nick’s throat. The young man was expertly taking nearly the full length of the cock and was tantalizingly squeezing the shaft with his lips and scraping it with his teeth as Singh stroked his throat, but Singh wanted more. Before he was unable to control his ejaculation, he pulled his cock out of Nick’s throat, leaned back, wrapped his arms under Nick’s pits, and raised and turned the young man. Nick docilely complied with the turning, running his hands up the mattress to where he was bent over the bed. He raised his tail for the doctor, and Singh grasped Nick’s wrists, positioned his cock at Nick’s hole, and plunged in and up. Nick jerked and moaned, and then settled down as Singh began pumping him deep.

Nick raised his torso up into the doctor’s chest and Singh rubbed his cheek against Nick’s left cheek, signaling that he wanted Nick to turn his face for a kiss. Nick didn’t comply, however, not yet willing to come face to face with anyone in daylight, not yet believing he was presentable. Singh was finding the young man’s channel very presentable, though, and whispered appreciation in Nick’s ear at what the rent-boy was doing with his passage wall muscles to drive Singh’s stroking shaft wild. Denied Nick’s mouth, Singh latched his teeth onto the hollow of the young man’s throat where it met the shoulder and picked up the pace of his cock stroking. Nick let out a cry and began a rhythmic counterthrusting with his hips, taking the Indian deep. There was no stopping them now. They were both fully engaged. They raced on to a mutual ejaculation.

* * * *

They had fucked once. Nick knew that Singh would fuck him again. It was always a double with the Indian doctor, although they hadn’t done the double that Nick had been expecting yet—Singh joining with another man inside Nick at the same time. The man hadn’t completely lost his hard-on, the pencil-thin cock curving up from his pubic bush as the doctor sat close beside Nick on the side of the bed, one arm around the young man, pulling him in close, and his other hand holding the hand mirror.

“Here, look. Don’t be afraid. I did a beautiful job. You are a handsome young man again.”

“No, I can’t. I’ll never to good looking again. My modeling career is ruined.”

“No, it’s not. Take a look. You’re beautiful.” He put the mirror right in front of Nick’s face and held him tight so he couldn’t turn away. Nick’s eyes were shut, but he eventually opened them, took a look, took a deeper look, and then raised a finger to the glass to trace the hardly discernible lighter shade of the final line of scaring from the bridge of his nose down to his right jaw.

“Even that line will disappear in time,” Singh said. “Don’t tan your face too deeply, though, or it will show. Even if it does, it draws one’s attention to what you’ll have to agree is a very handsome face.”

Nick didn’t disagree that his face was handsome, although he knew from observation of Singh and Bradford that as he aged, the age of his face wouldn’t keep up and a discerning man could see that he’d had work. He just wouldn’t know how much work had been required. And that was something to worry about in the future, not now or for the next decade. The face indeed was handsome. But it was no longer his face. It was the face of someone else. “It’s not me,” he said.

“It can be. There could be a new you. You have an opportunity now to change yourself in subtle ways—to become even more wanton than you were before, for instance. No one here in the village has seen the old you. Even I have only seen photographs of you before the accident. You are a beautiful young man again. And we know that there is nothing to be ashamed of with your body—and what you can do with it. You could become the community’s siren.”

“The local poke. The neighborhood hole,” Nick said.

“If you wish, yes,” Singh answered, ignoring the sarcasm Nick had reached for. “There will be no end of men who want to be inside you, if that’s what you want. They will worship your body—and your face. There are many young men who would sign with the Devil to enjoy that.”

“For as long as it lasts.”

“It would last for years—glorious years.”

Nick’s thoughts went back to Sami Hulagu, the blacksmith, and the burns on his face. They didn’t detract from the man’s sensuality, Nick had to agree. They, rather, enhanced the mystery of him. He still had the body of a god—a heavily muscled god, the god of blacksmithing. Hephaestus to the Greeks; Vulcan to the Romans. Nicki was already weaving a story to be written about Hulagu, god of American smithies. And, thinking of Hulagu, Nick felt a rise of disappointment surging over him. There had been just the one time and it had been two weeks since the masked party at the B&B. It was like Sami was avoiding him. What Erick had said about Hulagu—that he was a one-and-done stud—kept going through Nick’s mind. He hadn’t believed at the time that it would apply to him. He still didn’t want to believe it applied to him. Sami had not made him wait as Erick had said he did with men. They had melded so well, so naturally and completely.

Nick was used to men coming sniffing after him, especially after they’d had sex with him. But Sami hadn’t come for him or summoned him, or even noticed him as Nick frequently walked down to the creek bank solely to see what Hulagu was doing. He usually was blacksmithing, shirtless—the Vulcan god of the Americas—keeping the tourists mesmerized with his physique and arrogant, confident charisma as much as with the skill of his metal work. Nick had even followed Sami at a distance one day when he and a young man connected in the smithy and Sami walked the young man down the street to a small, old brick cottage on the bank of the creek.

It was obvious that Sami was taking the young man to his home, something he hadn’t done with Nick, and it was equally evident from the intimate embrace Sami had the young man in that Sami was going to fuck the young man when they got there. But Sami’s whole attention had been on the young man. He hadn’t seen Nick. He hadn’t come for Nick or summoned him in those two weeks. Nick’s sexual frustration was high. Singh was fucking him and doing very well with it. But Singh wasn’t Sami Hulagu, who was all the more desirable because he hadn’t immediately come sniffing around Nick again. In this way, Erick’s description of Sami’s technique was working as advertised.

“You can do everything you did before,” Singh was saying. “You can model; you can even resume a successful career as an escort.”

“Perhaps,” Nick answered. Now that he thought of it, he probably could extend the modeling and escort work longer now with this new, more permanent face. Yes, in time, the aging of his body would go out of whack with his new, more-permanent face, but that probably would be farther into the future than it would have been without the plastic surgery. In fact, he probably would have had a couple of series of surgeries in the future anyway. He was becoming more and more resolved to this. And, in turn, he was changing his attitude toward facial beauty in general. Sami’s burns gave him arousing character in Nick’s estimation now, for instance, rather than disgusted him.

“No perhaps about it,” Singh said, breaking once more into Nick’s thoughts. “You’re a sexual bombshell. I think I’ve already proven that I think that. I’ve had trouble keeping my hands off you.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had kept your hands off me.” They both laughed, aware of the irony that Singh was holding Nick in an embrace as they sat on the side of the bed, had dropped the mirror, and was fisting and stroking Nick’s cock. Both of them knew they’d be fucking again in short order.

“I must go call Harvey Williams and tell him he can visit on schedule. He wanted to visit after the reconstruction was complete.”

Harvey Williams, Nick thought. The older, rich man who had shown such concern for him—and who had fucked him at the New York InterContinental so masterfully and whose only drawback had been how ugly his pockmarked face was. Now, Nick realized, the man’s face didn’t bother him at all. Now he could only think how he’d gone over the moon with Williams’s thick, long, throbbing cock inside him. Nick suddenly was in high heat again.

“You are going to go call Mr. Williams now? Right now?”

“No, not right now,” Singh said, with a laugh. He half rose and turned to where he was standing, bent over Nick’s body, and between Nick’s legs. The young man sighed as, grasping his hips between his hands, Singh positioned his cock at Nick’s hole. Nick lurched and yelped as the Indian doctor penetrated him strongly and began to pump him deep. Arching his back, Nick reached out for the hand mirror and briefly looked at his face again. Yes, the work had provided enough flexibility for him to see adequate expression to being taken forcefully. He tossed the mirror aside; wrapped an arm around the doctor’s neck, bringing the man’s face down to his for a deep kiss; and dug the heels of his feet into the edge of the mattress, raising his pelvis and putting it into motion, melding into the rhythm of the vigorous fuck.

He was going to be a model again—and a high-class rent-boy. He was going to give the johns the fucks of their lives again.

“When Williams comes, you two are going to double me, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes,” Singh answered, “when Harvey Williams comes we are going to share you. It’s the culmination of this project.”

So that’s what Nick had been to them, he thought—their project, setting them up to being inside him at the same time, together.

* * * *

Nick did a doubletake at the door to the George B&B. “Umm. Is Erick here? He invited me over to discuss our novel manuscripts.”

“He had to go out in a rush, honey, but he’ll be back in a bit. Come on in and you can wait for him in the parlor.”

It was only when the man spoke that Nick realized it was George, the B&B owner and Erick Bradford’s partner—in more ways than one, Nick had been told. This wasn’t the zaftig, blonde-wigged drag queen of the night of the masked party, though. This was a tall, robust man, who was heavy, but more muscular than fat. He also was very good looking, with a mane of salt-and-pepper hair and a sport shirt unbuttoned enough to show that his chest was hirsute and his pecs firm. His trousers were tight enough for Nick to discern that he dressed left and he was hung.

Nick followed the man meekly through the foyer and into the parlor, and it not lost on him that George had given him an “I could eat you alive” look at the door. Nick’s hand had self-consciously gone to his right cheek, to hide the scar there and possibly to come up with a lame apology for his looks, before he realized that there wasn’t anything wrong with his looks anymore, and that although he didn’t look like the Nick of old, George wouldn’t have known how the Nick of old looked anyway.

In the parlor, where George said he could wait for Erick to return, George didn’t make Nick wait alone. After offering Nick a drink and that being turned down, George sat across a coffee table from Nick’s chair in an open-legged stance that showed that, if anything, he was harder now than when he’d answered the door. Just to make his interest clear, he dropped his hand to dangle in front of his crotch, moving it enough to capture Nick’s gaze, and gave Nick a come-hither smile. He wasted no time with the banter of seduction. What was that both Singh and Erick had said to Nick about not being caught alone with George? Nick mused.

Feeling awkward, Nick tried to put the conversation at the level of chitchat. “I had the tour the night of your masked party of the paintings of yours hanging around in here. Very impressive. I loved the color schemes and how the paintings draw you in and make you smile.”

“Kumar tells me you are a model and a male escort in New York,” was George’s response. “He says you take cock and that you’re a bombshell in bed. You take cock, right? Kumar has fucked you good?”

“Um, yes. But . . .” Nick stopped there, He didn’t know what “but” would imply. The man’s directness had thrown him off guard. And the man looked like a power driver.

George wasn’t direct only in his language. He unzipped himself, took a champion, hard cock out of his trousers, leaned back, and stroked himself as he continued the conversation. He obviously was looking for a reaction from Nick, who studiously did not give him one.

“You are sex on a stick,” George said, “but I’m sure you know that. If you work for a New York escort service, you rent by the hour. I want to fuck you. This isn’t New York; we don’t do New York prices here. But I’ll give you $200 to go upstairs with me and let me bang the shit out of you while we wait for Erick to come back.”

Ah, yes, Nick remembered what the guys had said about being left alone with George—where that surely would lead.

“I don’t know about—”

“I know about it for both of us,” George said, standing up. “Do you want to walk upstairs in front of me, or shall I carry you up?”

Eyeing the man’s very inviting shaft, Nick said, “It looks like it would be dangerous to let you walk behind me.” Kumar had canceled him that the best way to get along in the neighborhood was to go along.

George carried him upstairs bent over his shoulder, muttering, “How do you like it best: missionary, doggie, cowboy, all ways?”

Such refined charm.

George indeed was a power driver and he banged the shit out Nick. Nick had a good time and came back downstairs $200 richer to join Erick, who had returned in the interim, after he knelt between George’s naked thighs and gave the big man an expert blow job. Before George blew, though, he pulled Nick up into his lap, descending on his hard cock, and, held the young man close to his chest, George’s mouth possessing Nick’s, and bounced a crouching Nick up and down on his cock to a mutual creaming. Nick earned the $200. Using the leverage of his feet, flat on the mattress on either side of the big man’s hips, he rode the cock hard in coordination with George’s power drives.

When George had finished Nick—and, even for being a rent-boy, Nick could think of no other description for it than that George had finished him—they held there, Nick in George’s lap, facing him, both panting hard. George still inside him.

“Did I live up to New York standards?” George whispered in Nick’s ear.

“You surpassed them,” Nick answered.

“I’m going to fuck you again in a few minutes.”

“Yes, please. Did I meet your standards?” The man had been an expert with the cock, probably in the top ten of the men who had ever fucked Nick, and that was saying something. It was still a few slots in back of Sami, though.

“More than, yes. I could tell you’re a professional. What the muscles of your channel walls can do . . . well, that should be patented. You don’t have to go back to New York. You can stay right here in Madison Mills. I can pimp you, right here in the inn. There are men living here who want what you can give and we’re on the gay circuit for B&Bs. You can do as well here in Madison Mills as you can in New York.”

“It’s something to think about,” Nick answered, clearly pleased that he had satisfied to the point of receiving that offer.

“Now? As you can tell, I want you again.”

“Yes, please.”

Without rising immediately, George instructed Nick to stay on the cock but to cantilever his torso out over the carpet and stream his legs back around George’s hips. George grabbed the young man’s wrists with his hands. At this point he stood, with Nick’s small body flared out in front of him like a diver coming off the board into the water far below. “Use your toes. Fuck yourself,” George commanded. “This is called the Flying Fuck. They have this in the big city?”

“No,” Nick managed through his heavy breathing, as, pushing off with his toes he fucked himself on George’s long, thick, throbbing cock.

When Nick came downstairs, he was humming, and his mind was working hard on how happy George was in fucking him—how often George had told him how good-looking and sexy he was. All of his fears had been for naught. What Singh had said to him about not needing to be the old Nick—that he was quite presentable being a new Nick—had hit home. Nick was whole again—and he was a new Nick.

His euphoria dissipated a bit when he got to the bottom of the stairs and saw Erick sitting there, Nick’s manuscript in his hands. He’d just been upstairs, being banged with considerable noise, by Erick’s partner. He started to apologize, although he couldn’t think of anything he could say that would be acceptable. Erick said it for him.

Erick grinned and said, “George fucks real well, doesn’t he? Don’t look so scared. I know he fucks other young men. I told you that at the party. If he didn’t, he’d be more than I could handle. Come on in here and sit and listen to the praise I have for your manuscript. I’ve read most of it. It’s great. I want to put you in touch with my agent.”

Nick floated into the room and they sat discussing the manuscript for an hour. Erick had the insight to realize that there were people from Madison Mills, including George and him, loosely folded into characters in the book.

“This Antonio guy—the Greek—that has strong elements of our blacksmith, Sami Hulagu, in it, I think.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Nick answered.

“You seem smitten with him. That’s where you went the night of the masked party, isn’t it? You went with him and he fucked you good.”

“Yes.”

“I knew he would. He fucks all the good-looking young men who will take his cock. You write about him with a bit of melancholy, though. He only fucked you that once, didn’t he?”

“Yes. Just that night.”

“You’d like him to fuck you again, though, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes. He is sexy as hell.”

“Yes, he is. But, as I told you before, he’s pretty much a one-and-done lover. He had a steady once, but his lover died. I haven’t known him to repeat since then. But I know how you feel about him. I feel that way too.”

“He’s—?”

“Yes, he’s fucked me too, and it was divine. But it was only the once. I, like you, would like him to do it again and again—and George wouldn’t mind, just as I don’t mind that he banged you upstairs and I listened down here to you getting it real good from him. But I have to counsel you not to put much hope in getting it from Sami again. The way you put it here in this manuscript, though, is melting. Keep that just the way it was. Now, about getting this into the hands of my agent . . .”

Nick knew he was getting good advice. That it was good advice, though, didn’t make it any easier to take.

* * * *

Erick’s Agent had taken Nick on readily, but with the proviso that Erick work with the manuscripts before sending them in.

They were in Erick’s bedroom in the cottage he and George shared, standing beside the desk where they would work after they had settled into a routine of relaxing before starting the review of Nick’s latest writing. It was a strange way to relax, but it did drain the tension out of them and helped them focus on the writing more than on sex—after having taken care of the sex. It also fulfilled what Erick wanted in compensation for helping Nick with his writing. He hadn’t been just teasing Nick about engaging in mutual hand jobs.

Nick was full frontal to the mirror, watching his reflection in the glass, not being able to fail to appreciate the beauty of his body and face. as Erick held him close and stroked him off. Erick was standing close behind Nick, embracing him with one arm rising up Nick’s torso, the hand cupping Nick’s chin and pulling his head back as Erick buried his face in Nick’s throat. Erick’s other hand was snaked around Nick’s waist, encasing and stroking off Nick’s shaft.

After writhing a bit in Erick’s firm grasp, Nick splashed his cum on the mirror, and Erick said, “Now me. On the bed.”

The two were positioned beside each other, Erick on his back on the bed, Nick sitting sideways by Erick’s thighs, facing Erick, but scooted down. Erick was panting and moaning, his left leg bent and crossed over Nick’s thighs, as Nick stroked the other young man’s cock with one hand and finger fucked his hole with the other hand.

George entered the room as Erick arched his back, cried out to the ceiling, “Oh, shit, YES!” and arced his load up his belly. George leaned over, grabbed Nick, and manhandled him over to the side of the bed. “Nick first, then you, Erick,” he growled.

This too was sometimes part of their work routine—taking care of everyone’s sexual needs and desires before Nick and Erick got down to serious work.

Erick sat against the headboard, watching, as George positioned Nick’s shoulder blades on the surface of the bed, with his lower torso jutting out over the carpet, his legs bent and his feet flat on the carpet. Going under him, facing up, George—dexterously for a man of his mass—went into the position of the upward-facing crab, penetrated Nick’s channel with his thick cock, and, rocking up and down, started to pump him.

Nick was doing what he needed to do to get along in the neighborhood. He certainly needn’t have worried about whether men would still want him after his face surgery, he now accepted.

* * * *

Nick was standing on the balcony outside his clinic bedroom, looking down the slope to the center of the Madison Mills village and toward Neshaminy Creek, when he realized that the ornate metal railing on the balcony must have been crafted by Sami Hulagu. He was mooning about sex with the muscular Turk and trying to pick out the smithy from among the buildings below, when arms went around him from behind and he was folded into a strong embrace of a taller, heavier man.

He leaned his head back into the hollow of the man’s shoulder and sighed. The man’s beard brushed against Nick’s cheek, he turned his face up to the man, and their lips met. He opened his lips to the man’s tongue and moaned deeply. His eyes were open. It no longer concerned him at all that Harvey Williams wasn’t a handsome man—that, in fact, his face was ugly and pockmarked. The rest of him was all that Nick could wish for, and what was in the surface beauty of a face. Not much. Not enough. Certainly not after he had gotten beyond the burn scars on Sami Hulagu’s face.

But no use dreaming about Hulagu anymore. He wasn’t here and not likely ever to be here. Harvey Williams had been here, and Harvey Williams had been so good to Nick.

“I’ve wanted you so bad,” Williams whispered in Nick’s ear when their lips parted. Nick knew how much Williams wanted him, His hard cock was pressed into the small of Nick’s back. “Will you take me?”

“Yes, of course,” Nick answered.

“I can’t wait. Will you take me here . . . now?”

“Yes. Please, yes. Hurry. Fuck me. Fuck me hard.”

Williams knelt behind Nick. He pulled Nick’s trousers and briefs off his legs, and he buried his face in Nick’s crack, causing Nick to writhe in his grasp and moan and groan deeply. Nick slid his arms out wide on the railing and gripped it hard to hold himself steady. Then Williams stood back up, lifted Nick and hung him, belly down on the top of the railing, with his arms and torso dangling over the balcony and his legs dangling above the balcony floor. The older man worked his cock inside Nick’s channel and fucked him and fucked him and fucked him.

Williams took Nick to the young man’s bed and fucked him some more. Afterward they lay there, panting slightly, fondling each other’s bodies, and coming back to earth.

“I want you occasionally,” Harvey murmured. “You can do as you like with other men if you’ll just be with me occasionally.”

“Of course, whenever you want,” Nick answered. He knew how much Williams had done for him. He’d given him his life back—not exactly the Nick he’d been, but a new, equally good Nick.

“You can be here or New York. I have a small house here, in Madison Mills. Or I can set you up in an apartment in New York. I know you want to be a model again. I can make that happen. I can understand that you might want to continue to work as an escort. That would be fine with me. I won’t promise not to sleep around myself.”

“I think I might like it right here—at least for now,” Nick answered.

“I’ll give you a key to the house. It’s just off the square over by the creek. It’s not large, but it is well appointed and I have a management company to take care of everything. All you will need to do is call.”

“Any hunks in the management company?”

“Yes. You’ll be well maintained too, if you want to be. This is a gay town. That’s why I keep a house here. Oh, I see. You were testing me. Did I pass?”

“Yes, with flying colors,” Nick answered. They both laughed.

“Have you enjoyed the attentions of Kumar?”

“So, you know he has been fucking me.”

“Yes, he made clear he would if he took your case. I wanted the best for you. He’s the best plastic surgeon. I know he’s very good in bed too.”

“Yes. Yes, he is . . . not better than you are, though. And I’m not shitting you about that. You know he’s good in bed because you have shared young men with him, right?”

“That’s right. And you are good with that—with Kumar and me sharing you?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks. I would like to watch Kumar fuck you. Are you good with that?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’d would like to share you with Kumar—like I did with Steven Saylor in New York on New Year’s Eve—except with Kumar being able to get hard. Would that—?”

“That would be fine. I’d like that.”

“Now?”

“If Doctor Singh is available and can get it up,” Nick said, with a smile.

Doctor Singh was . . . and could, and unlike Stephen Saylor, he was quite hard when it came to sharing.

* * * *

The route to Harvey’s Madison Mills village house went by Sami Hulagu’s smithy. He was there, working at his furnace, hammering out something in metal as Nick approached. He was shirtless, his muscles bulging at the strain of his work, his chest glistening with honest sweat. He looked up as Nick slowed in passing.

“Hey, you. Come here,” the blacksmith called out, and Nick’s steps were arrested and his heart leaped up into his throat. Try as he might, he hadn’t gotten over that one lay by Sami.

“Here, over here,” Hulagu repeated. With faltering steps, Nick walked over to the smithy, its sides to the street and to the creek open, and stood just outside the concrete floor of the shop.

“No, I said here. Right here,” Sami said, pointing to directly in front of him. Nick gave a little moan but he moved into the shed to where he was standing directly in front of Sami. His eyes went to the angry red, wrinkled burn area on the right side of the man’s face. Sami had been achingly handsome before whatever accident caused that. He was achingly handsome in Nick’s eyes even now.

Sami reached out with a hand placed behind Nick’s neck and pulled the young man’s face in to for a deep kiss. Aching for it, Nick went with it. Opening his mouth to the insistence of the Turk’s tongue—letting the blacksmith have whatever he wanted, trying to make clear that Sami could have whatever he wanted.

“I haven’t seen you around,” Sami said when he freed Nick from the kiss, “but I’ve been thinking of you. I was afraid you left Madison Mills and went back to wherever you came from. I was afraid to ask Kumar, though. I understand he was laying you.”

“A lot of men have laid me, including you—once,” Nick answered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to sound so catty.”

“It didn’t. You were a great lay. I keep thinking of it. Uh, sorry, I’m all sweaty, or I’d give you a proper welcome.”

Nick had, in fact, wondered why they’d been standing so separately. But he was too afraid to take the initiative on anything here. It would have to all be Sami—whatever Sami wanted.

“It’s OK,” Nick said. Then he blurted out, “Anything you want. I’ll give you anything you want. If you want to lay me out on this table over here like you did the night of the party and fuck me in broad daylight, you can. Do anything you want with me. I’ve been told you’re ‘one and done,’ but I can’t stand the thought that you won’t fuck me again. You can do it here, now, as long as you do it.”

Sami laughed. “I think I can do better than that. We can go to my house. It’s just up the street. I can shower first. You said anything I want. Will you shower with me?”

Sami fucked Nick up against the tiled wall of his shower under a stream of water, Nick’s back being pushed up and down the soapy tiles and his knees hooked on Nick’s hips. And then, before he came, Sami made it interesting, growling that he wanted Nick’s total surrender to him, and turning Nick, bending him over, and holding the young man in front of him under the cascading water, bent over, both torso and arms and legs, dangling in front of Sami, without touching the tiled floor, while Sami pulled him on and off the cock to his climax.

The Turk took the young rent-boy every way from Sunday on his bed, ending up with Nick half on and half off the bed, his arms spread and hands palming the floor, with his torso streaming off the bed, and Sami knelt on the bed between Nick’s legs, and pulling the young man’s channel on and off his cock.

Later, as they lay in each other’s arms, stretched out on the bed, Nick propped up on his side, looking down into Sami’s face and tenderly tracing the wrinkles of the burned area on the blacksmith’s face, Sami asked, “Does my face disturb you?”

“No, certainly not,” Nick answered, fully knowing how far he’d come to be able to say that. “It gives you character. I’d say that it makes you sexier, but you couldn’t get any sexier than your sex techniques.”

“Do you mean that?” Sami asked. “I was told you were a male whore. Are you saying I have good sex techniques?”

“The best,” Nick said. He could see that that pleased the blacksmith. “I want you to show me more of your techniques.”

Sami groaned. “Maybe in a bit.” And then, after a kiss and a bit of fondling, he said, “My face. I got too close to the furnace one day and stumbled.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything about it. It’s fine with me.” Nick did wonder, though, why he hadn’t had Kumar Singh work on it. One of the best plastic surgeons in the world, so both Williams and Singh himself said, was right here in the village.

As if he knew what Nick was thinking, Sami said, “I could have had Kumar work on it. He offered to do it—for almost free—well if I let him watch me fuck guys. But he couldn’t promise much improvement. A burn is different from a slice. And I decided that if a guy didn’t want me inside them because of my face, I didn’t want to fuck them.”

“Every part of you is beautiful to me,” Nick said.

They lay there in silence for a few minutes before Sami spoke again. “You know I was thinking . . . over the last two weeks when I hadn’t seen you . . . how long were you planning on being in Madison Mills?”

“As long as you want me to be here.” It wasn’t just because Sami was here. Doctor Singh and Harvey Williams were here, and Harvey had said he could get the new Nick modeling jobs. George was here, with a proposition letting Nick do the same as he could do in New York with sex for pay. And New York was feeling too big, too overwhelming for Nick for now. And, not least, Erick Bradford was here to work with Nick on his novel. Nick ached to write novels and have them published.

“I was thinking. I have this house and all . . . I wouldn’t ask you to just be with me. It’s fine with me if you want to be a male whore. I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t fuck other men. But I thought maybe—”

“Yes,” Nick said, rolling over on top of Sami, putting himself in position, lowering his channel on the man’s cock, and beginning to rise and fall on it. There was the issue that he had a house to go to of his own, just down the street. But there was no need to bring that up until they were settled right here.

* * * *

It was the last few minutes of 2018, in Times Square New York, below the CNN tower, where, as in the previous year, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen were trying to fill in time on national television, Cohen with even more gay suggestive patter than the previous year. It wasn’t as cold as the previous year, but gays had gathered in this section of the square, drawn by the CNN tower, and were taking advantage of the license to cuddle under the pretense that it was a cold as ever it was on New Year’s Eve.

Nick Daniels had a special reason to celebrate. His agent—the agent Erick Bradford had introduced him to—had sold the manuscript of his first novel to a good publisher. He’d gotten a “celebration” advance on the coming hefty advance as his agent said he should do something special for New Year’s. So, Nick had spent that on something special. He’d also gotten a hefty paycheck from walking the runway for a fashion show Harvey Williams had gotten him booked for. But Nick had banked that. He was being prudent with his money, knowing now that life could serve up a double whammy without notice. His values had changed in other, maturing ways, in the past year too.

After the show Nick had asked if Williams would like to do the Times Square ball drop with him this year, and Williams had been pleased to be asked.

“You could have any number of handsome young men go with you,” he’d said.

“I’d like to celebrate it with you. It’s been an eventful year since I was in Times Square last year. That had started out so well, including with you, and turned tragic too soon. I’d like to wipe out the memory of later that night. And I’d like to do it with you.”

“In that case, I’d be delighted to go with you,” Williams had said.

And now, when they were down in the crowd, approaching midnight, Williams was a bit more apprehensive.

“You are causing quite a stir. Many men are watching you and envying me,” Williams said, looking around. And it was true, Nick was getting a lot of attention, and he’d gotten several obvious propositions, men brushing up against him and whispering in his ear as well as giving him long, inviting stares. None of this was lost on the older, not-handsome Williams.

“I hope you will take this interest you’re getting as final proof that you are a very handsome young man, Nick,” Williams says. “Don’t let me control you tonight. This is a night for total pleasure. If you see a man you want to kiss at midnight and go off with, feel free to do so. I don’t want to inhibit that. I’m just so pleased you spent the last couple of hours with me down here.”

Nick grabbed the lapels of Williams’s cashmere overcoat and turned the man toward him, face to face. Where he once winced to look at the older man’s time-ravished face, Nick didn’t flinch now. The ball was already starting to drop, and the crowd had picked up the chant: Twenty . . . nineteen . . . eighteen.

“I see the man I want to kiss at midnight, Harv, and I see the man I want to control me.”

Ten . . . nine . . . eight.

“And after the ball drops, I want you to take me to a hotel and fuck the hell out of me—all night. No sliding car rides in the snow tonight. I’ve booked—and paid for—a room at the InterContental tonight. Not the suite you booked last year, but it’s got a bed and a bath, which are all we need. I want us to stay in the hotel room that night, not go out on the road half plastered. Stay in the hotel, safe. Can you understand that?”

“Of course I can,” Williams answered.

And, although he didn’t say it, the hotel booking had been paid for from money Nick had earned entirely himself with no intervention from Harvey or from what Nick made as a model or an escort. He wanted there to be no doubt that he was going with Harvey Williams entirely on his own decision and his own, nickel.

Even though when the moment came that the ball dropped, there were still men near them trying to make the handsome young Nick Daniels, it was the older, not-handsome-of-face Harvey Williams Nick was kissing at midnight and then taking to a hotel room.

- FINI -