Sergey’s Stashes

I heard Sergey’s widow, Sonia, flare up at Ivan, Sergey’s brother, although I wasn’t that close to where they stood next to the gravesite. Of course everyone’s heads had snapped up when they heard Sonia lash out in that snarly, nasal, thickly accented voice of hers. She was leaning heavily on the arm and shoulder of a younger, thuggish Russian guy I’d seen hanging around on Sergey’s goon squad. Sonia was a buxom Slavic blonde a good bit beyond her “use by” date, although it was quite evident she’d been very tasty at some point in her life. Sergey had kept in much better condition, considering he now was dead. As I understand it, the money for his financial stakings had come from her family and that her family was one you wouldn’t want to mess with. I do know that she no longer had what it took to keep Sergey home and satisfied.

I’d done what I could to hold back at Las Vegas’s Woodlawn cemetery. I might have come closer—the crowd was fairly large—without being notice, although there was little reason for Sonia to think that I was anything more than the lounge singer at the Ice Palace bar in Sergey’s Russian Dreams casino on the Las Vegas strip. Ivan, the casino’s entertainment chief and therefore my boss, had seen me approach the grave ceremony, though, and had motioned for me to hang back. It was good he did. Sonia was casting her baleful look on those around the gravesite, no doubt looking for a target. I doubt, though, that, in her wildest dreams, she would have set her ire on me. I would have been the target she was looking for, though.

“What’s this about him dying in his mistress’s arms?” Ivan, Sonia had blasted out. “Where did the media get that idea and why have you been avoiding me?”

“Let’s keep it down, Sonia.” Ivan said in as soothing a voice as a Russian mafioso could manage. “People are looking. This isn’t the time or place to—”

“And the money. Why is the casino accountant telling me there may be some discrepancies—?”

“Not now, Sonia. The priest is about to begin.” Ivan had wrapped his arms around the widow, but he was looking back at me. I didn’t want to talk to him now—or ever again, if I could avoid it. I wasn’t so dense that I didn’t realize that all bets were off on my employment at the casino. But he had that “I want to talk to you” look in his eyes. His black suit jacket was pushed open in his awkward embrace of Sonia so that I could see the butt of the gun in his armpit holster. I shuddered. How did I get involved with these people to begin with?

But I knew how that had happened, of course.

Ivan had known what was what here too, of course. That’s why I had called him that Tuesday night—just a week ago now?—in a panic. I didn’t know what else—who else—to call. Ivan was Sergey’s pimp as well as his brother and his right-hand man at the casino. It was because of Sergey’s appetites and that Ivan already was getting me singing gigs that Ivan knew. It’s why I got the permanent singing job at the casino, although I was good enough to hold down the job. Ivan liking how I had scratched his itch was what got me hooked up with Sergey. I’d only gone under Ivan a few time before I was turned over to Sergey. Ivan wanted to deliver his offerings to Sergey as fresh as possible, and I got the distinct impression that Sergey didn’t like to share, not even with his brother. Sergey’s desires were why I had a small suite to live in at the casino. It, of course, was better than I could get for digs otherwise, but I had the rooms for Sergey’s convenience more than mine.

Sergey was a little lethargic that Tuesday night. I had to pump him up with my hand and mouth, and then, although he usually was a vigorous top, exceptionally so for a big, pretty heavy man in his early fifties, I was saddled on him, riding him, both of us having a good time—I couldn’t deny I liked having Sergey inside me—when he gave a snort and a fart, his eyes went wide and fixed, and he stopped breathing. I tried CPR but that didn’t work. So, I called Ivan, who showed up within minutes because he was downstairs supervising the casino entertainment, and he’d come and done the rest. Sergey was already gone when Ivan got there. While he was wiping surfaces down and contemplating what to do next and in what order, I had to pack out everything that was mine and move to another room—a smaller room, I might add—one without a good view. I obviously was sinking fast in importance here in the casino.

I hadn’t seen Ivan since then until we were both at the cemetery for the funeral. I only had one thing I needed to clear up with him and then there wasn’t anything I wanted more than to change my life and identity and clear out of Las Vegas. I didn’t want any more to do with Ivan or anything connected with Sergey—and certainly none of their Russian friends—and I didn’t want to do casinos ever again, especially ones that had been as shady at Russian Dreams was. I didn’t really want to know what little I did know about Russian-run casinos.

I’d almost made it to the cemetery entrance, walking as much as I could within groups of others, and was starting to make a call for an Uber ride back to the casino, when one of the black limousines I mistakenly took as being from the mortuary company rolled up beside me and stopped. The tinted window for the backseat glided down and there was Ivan Sarnov saying, “Get in, Dale. We need to talk.”

“Yep, we do,” I said, as I climbed into the backseat. I needed to assure him I’d leave quietly and never say anything if they’d let me go.

It was just the two of us in the back. I was surprised to see Pete, from the casino security staff—yet another Russian, one of Sergey’s favorite muscle guys—driving the limo rather than someone from the funeral services. That gave me a scare. The car rolled off in a different direction from the line of funeral service cars, so I knew then I was being taken for a different ride. Was this it, then? Had I seen and known too much?

“If it’s got to do with the bank account you’re holding,” Ivan said, putting a hand on my knee, “you can keep holding it and using the interest from that as you need to.”

Yes, that was it. But what Ivan was saying was hopeful.

As part of Sergey’s business model, he had stashed money here and there. As an indication that whatever he and I had was long term, I held one of those stashes in a Cayman Island account. And it wasn’t spare change. He had me holding three-and-a-half million. He’d said he and I would go off to a new life with it as one option. He didn’t keep all of his retirement stashes in one place. He was always careful to present me as only one of his options and this told me that I probably wasn’t the only secret holder of a nest egg for him. I’d always assumed he was joking about escaping with me. And it had turned out to be a joke. He was going off in a steel coffin now. And who knew where I was going from here?

Ivan told me where I was going. “We don’t have much time, so just pay attention to this.”

Not much time, I wondered. Not much time until what? He was groping me with his hand now and had taken my hand and put it on his crotch, where, taking the hint, I’d unzipped and released him. Since he’d turned me over to Sergey, I’d been off limits to him. Sergey was out of the picture now. Ivan could step up to the plate again now. But what was it he was saying about limited time? Not much time after he’d fucked me in the back of the limo, I assumed. But not much time for whatever else beyond that? He answered that.

“You have a flight leaving in three hours. First to Miami and then on to the Virgin Islands—the American ones. You have a hotel booking there in St. Thomas and a banker’s name to get you hooked into the Cayman Island account. You can start a new life there. Feel free to use a mil of that to get yourself established on the island and you can easily live off the interest from the rest until we decide on the money. Here’s your passport and some credit cards in the new name—and the airline tickets in that name too. I like you. So, this is the sendoff you get. Forget everything you knew about Las Vegas. You’ll regret it if you don’t. We’ll keep an eye on you.”

I wondered who the “we” was. If it was meant to sound ominous, it succeeded. I flipped open the passport. I usually had black hair and a two-week’s growth on a beard and mustache, but Sergey had had me get photos shaved and as a platinum blond, and those were what showed in this passport. And I was someone other than Dale now. Now my name was Evan Nance. Ivan handed me a bottle of hair dye too and told me to go platinum blond in a men’s room before going through airport security.

“If you’re going to mess around, you’d best make the rest of you this color too,” he said.

He was giving me permission to mess around? So, was this all? “So, is this all?” I asked.

There was more, of course.

“No, of course not,” he answered. “Lay down for me here in the car—we have some time. And I know where you’ll be in the Caribbean too.”

I sighed, unbuckled my belt, and lay back in the corner of the backseat. He brushed my hand away, though. I knew from before that he liked to unwrap his presents himself. He had my trousers, briefs, and jacket off and my shirt open, to where I lay bare under him, stretched out on the backseat, leaning into the side wall, the heel of my left boot pressed into the back of the front seat, while, fully clothed, with just his erection exposed, Ivan lay on top of me, penetrated, and fucked me. Only his dick was exposed, but that was all he needed to have free. Pete drove around Las Vegas, watching us in his rearview mirror as closely as he could, while Ivan did his pushups on me within the confines of smoked-glass windows.

He barebacked me. The brothers were Russian. They didn’t believe in precautions beyond regular checks. They did have the casino doctor check me regularly, though, and if I let any other guy come back to my room after a singing session in the Ice Palace bar, I was expected to take all precautions.

Ivan was thick and long and good with his cock, so I didn’t mind, grasping his biceps with my hands and moving my hips with him, moaning, and taking the stretch of him hard and deep. Neither brother was cut, and I enjoyed the raw looseness of their slide inside me. I arched my back and gave a little cry as, with a jerk and a lurch, Ivan came inside me. He pulled away to the other side of the backseat immediately, pulling out a handkerchief, cleaning himself off, stuffing himself back in his trousers, and handing me the handkerchief to tend to my own needs before I redressed. He said nothing, but he was smiling. Pete had maneuvered the limo so that we were approaching McCarran Airport.

All very neatly done.

There was a final kiss before I was dropped off at the airport departures entrance, which let me know in what way Ivan liked me. He said something in parting that I remembered and deeply appreciated after I’d thought about it, if, in fact, he was telling the truth. “This relocation is all me,” he said. “The other guys at the casino want you to disappear, Dale—or I suppose I should call you Evan now—but not necessarily this way. And the widow is on the rampage, trying to find out who was with Sergey at the end.” That caused me to shudder. If he was leveling with me, I had escaped the iron fist of the Russian mafia. Even with Ivan, I suspected I was being set up for something, but not for a one-way trip into the desert apparently.

“Do they know my new name?” I asked.

“No one but me and the man who obtained the passport know that name, and only I know it’s connected with you.”

I was both scared stiff and grateful. I had been contemplating changing my life from here myself but I had had no idea how to do it. Ivan was doing it for me. And I knew there were other ways this could have been handled from here.

I also knew, though, as I stood outside the departures entry after Pete pulled my suitcases, packed by someone other than me, out of the limo trunk, that this wasn’t the safest option for me—not the way it was happening, with me just disappearing off the face of the earth. Certainly not when I’d already been called in for questioning. It wasn’t just that I’d been there when Sergey bought the farm and I had been in bed with him. It was also because they had let it slip that it wasn’t a heart attack that had taken Sergey from us. He’d been poisoned.

I had no illusions about who was being set up as being the one who poisoned him. It might be an empty victory that I wasn’t here when the finger got around to be pointed at me.

* * * *

I turned my head toward the view of Frenchman’s Cove beyond the glass doors leading out onto the balcony in the $1,200-a-night St. Thomas Marriott resort room. The banker who met my two-and-a-half-hour evening flight from Miami had brought me here from the airport on the other side of Charlotte Amalie of the St. Thomas harbor on the chief American Virgin Island. We’d only stay the night here—at my expense, of course. But our final destination, the smaller and more remote St. Croix Island, didn’t have daily puddle-jumper airplane service beyond the time I had landed.

The banker had a multipart fee for meeting my plane and getting me settled. Ivan had told him what I’d do and how good I was in doing it.

The man was insatiable, getting what he could from our one night here, having made quite clear that he expected me to be fully accommodating for the services he’d be rendering for me in getting my life reset. Ivan had obviously told the man I was a male whore, earning my keep on my back. He hadn’t been at all subtle about putting me on my back when we’d arrived at the hotel. This wasn’t our first fuck. He’d fucked me as soon as we’d entered the room and now, again, after we’d gone to dinner. Our puddle-jumper plane hop down to St. Croix would come later in the next morning. There was every indication that Anthony—that was his name, Anthony Hendricks—would fuck me a couple of more times before we had to leave for the airport.

I wasn’t resisting him. I was on my back, legs bent and spread, buttocks rolled up to give him full access. He was long and thick in erection. I had my arms raised, grabbing the top edge of the mattress between it and the headboard, and he was hovered over me, his knees spreading my thighs, his hands gripping my wrists, holding me in place and starring down into my eyes, moving in deep, back nearly to the surface, and then in deep again, intently eyeing my pained expression at accommodating the stretch and thrust of him until I hadn’t been able to take it anymore and turned my face toward the view out over the water toward downtown Charlotte Amalie. He knew I was into it, though, I was looking away, but my hips were moving in concert with his thrusts.

He was my first black man, a solidly built man of the Caribbean, although he was more milk chocolate than ebony, reflecting mixed ancestry. He was a handsome man in his early forties, but massive, with more pounds on him than he should have. He was so tall and sturdily built, though, that he carried the weight well. Everything about him was big—his ego, musculature, his hands, his feet, his balls, and, of course, his cock, which was a jet black, with a purple, massive mushroom cap, which I’d had trouble getting into my mouth when he put me on my knees on the carpet and brutalized me before pulling me up, tossing me on the bed, covering me, and taking what he wanted. I was isolated and unprotected here in the Virgin Islands by anyone but this man, and the man knew it. He made sure I knew it as well.

He was uncut and barebacked me—just as Sergey had done. The deep slide and stretch of him had me moaning and groaning. He obviously been told I could take it—that I wanted it that way. I couldn’t say at this moment that I didn’t.

I felt him tense and his balls retract into his groin. He released my hands and gripped the top edge of the headboard, setting himself and thrusting harder, deeper, more vigorously. He was moving to his release. I grasped his buttocks, arched back, thrust my hips up, and cried out, “Yes, yes. Now!” shooting off myself as he jerked and shot, jerked and came—so full of cum that he blasted me four times.

Only the second time we’d fucked and we came together. I suspected that there would be a continuing relationship with my new banker—my first black man—beyond just helping me establish myself with a new identity in the Virgin Islands. On the whole, I didn’t mind. Anthony was a bit forceful, but I wouldn’t have taken up with either Ivan or Sergey if I didn’t want a daddy to take care of me. On the whole, Sergey was fine, despite the heartburn some of his business ties gave me. So, far, my first black man—Anthony Hendricks—was just fine too.

When he pulled out of me, I moved to roll off the bed, but he turned me over onto my belly on the bed with this strong hands, mounted me from behind like a dog, and screwed the hell out of me again.

* * * *

Hendricks flew with me to St. Croix the next day to settle me into a gay-friendly hotel, The Fred, on Strand Street, near the sea in Frederiksted, which he said was where the gay scene was in the U.S. Virgin Islands. But beyond the hotel reservations, introducing me to some friends of his he thought could be useful to me and showing me some houses for rent, we would only be staying with me that first night. I was of two minds on that. He screwed me really, really well—but he screwed me almost constantly and arrogantly, and I was still paying for his relocation services.

His office was on the main St. Thomas island. He’d been told to settle me someplace more remote, though, and he thought St. Croix, being the most gay friendly, would be the best place for me.

“You can decide on your own later,” he said. “I suggest you take a short-term rental to begin with, as real estate is quite expense in the islands.”

“Whatever you advise,” I answered, already settling into a role of submission to him, as he had established himself as a strong dominant.

We looked at a few small houses for rent, I picked out an unimposing flat on Prince Street, just three blocks from the Frederiksted pier, which was the main gathering spot in the seaside town on the island’s west coast. I could walk to everywhere I needed until I decided whether to have more private housing and a car, both of which would eat into the nest egg I was working with. Yes, it was a gigantic nest egg, but I was afraid that at some point the Russian mafia would show up to screw every dollar of the original amount out of me. What I was really looking for was some business I could buy into to become established here.

That pretty much dropped into my lap.

“I’m told you were a singer in a Las Vegas casino bar,” he said to me over lunch at Polly’s at the Pier on Strand Street by the entrance onto the pier. “That must mean you’re a good singer.”

“I held down the evening slots at a piano bar in a major casino, yes,” I answered.

“After dinner, maybe you’d like to go bar hopping on King Street then. There are some gay bars there that have music. I can introduce you to some guys. I have to go back to Charlotte Amalie tomorrow, but I can help you get introduced here.”

“Fine. We settled on a flat quickly, so what else is there to do here this afternoon?”

“After lunch, I’ll take you by our bank branch here and get you set up with the manager and connect with your funds, but then I think you know how we can spend the rest of the afternoon. There’s a beach right next to The Fred, and we can check that out, but, for the time I’m spending with you, I think—”

“I understand,” I answered. We did get out on the beach, me in just a Speedo, which confirmed for me that The Fred was a gay-friendly hotel and St. Croix was the place in the islands where guys were getting it on, because I got quite a bit of attention while we were on the beach. After an hour there, I was very much in the mood to give Anthony what he wanted in our shared room at the hotel. I’d exchanged looks and a few words with other guys on the beach and in the hotel that told me that it was very unlikely I would be lonely after Anthony flew back to the big island the next day.

Anthony encountered a friend, Jocko, on the beach—another big, strapping black bull like Anthony, and Anthony invited him back to our room to do me one after the other—which they did. Anthony asked Jocko to watch out for me in St. Croix, which he did, backing me up when I needed it and screwing me royally when I needed that as well.

* * * *

At a third gay music bar on King Street, a place called Francine’s, an open-mic singing event was under way. The club provided the pianist and patrons were welcomed up to the stage to sing. It wasn’t being publicized, but the club’s manager, Samuel, a big, handsome, ebony black stud of a man, who gave me a full-assessment look when Anthony introduced me and who held my hand in his big paw rather longer than was necessary when we met, folding his thumb under to rub my palm in a gesture I knew to be other offer of stud services, was using this method to look for new singers for the club.

“Ivan Sarnov told me you have a great voice and know all sorts of types of songs,” Anthony said as they sat at a table listening to a hopeful slaughter a rap song on stage. “You should go up on stage tonight. Maybe that’s what you’d like to do while you live here—sing in bars, like you did in Las Vegas.”

“Maybe, although it might be risky to do the same thing here that I did in Vegas if the point is to hide.”

“You are so far away from Las Vegas and the mainland that I can’t see how you would be tracked down here. We’ve been very careful about separating the records of your financial accounts.”

“They aren’t really my accounts. They are Sergey’s—or now his widow’s, I think.”

“It is not money that the Sarnovs want to declare and you’ve been told that you can use some of the principle to get established and live off the interest on the rest. You are a very rich young man—in addition to being very desirable physically. You will do well here. You would do very well in involving yourself in the club scene.”

“Well, just about anyone could sing better than the guy on the stage now,” I said. “And the piano player is atrocious. I’d have to accompany myself if I went up there tonight.”

“I’ll talk to Samuel,” Anthony said, and he had risen and headed for the bar the manager was leaning against before I could weigh in on whether I wanted to sing or not.

But I did want to sing. I had enjoyed the job I had at the Las Vegas casino. Being balled by Sergey was OK, but I really went along with that to keep my job at the Ice Palace bar.

Samuel must have really liked my singing too, because when I was finished, after three encores, singing Sinatra songs as well as show tunes and more contemporary pop renditions, Samuel appeared at our table, sitting down beside me, overpowering me with his muscular bulk and his ebony sexiness.

“Anthony tells me you might be looking for a job as a singer. If so, I want you to do it here. I don’t want the competition of you doing it anywhere else. He also says you are looking for a business to buy into. This one is for sale and I’m buying it if I can find a partner to put up half of the cost. The current owner is hopeless and running the place into the ground, despite this being a great location. Are you interested?”

I couldn’t deny that I was, indeed, interested. “You say you would be staying as part owner and manager,” I said.

“Do you find that attractive?” he asked.

“Very,” I said, making clear that I found him attractive as well. He was an ebony god.

“This is a gay bar, you understand,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Anthony tells me that you’re—”

“Yes,” I interjected.

“Then you should know that we have rooms upstairs and the men who work here are available to go upstairs with men who are willing to pay for it.”

“I understand.”

“As a key part of the entertainment, and as good-looking as you are, the patrons would want to take you upstairs as well.”

“I understand,” I said, giving him a level look.

“Would you go upstairs with me so that I can gauge how good a partner you would be.”

“Where are the stairs?” I asked. Anthony snorted his amusement.

* * * *

So, was Anthony going to watch Samuel fuck me, I wondered. It turned out he didn’t just watch, but he started that way.

The room was small, with the minimum of just-functional furniture: a double bed, with basic bedding on it; a straight chair; and a small bureau, with sexual aids laid out on top—a box of condoms, tissues, lube, a bottle of poppers, dildoes in two sizes, restraints, a small hand whip, a ball gag. The flooring was bare wood. There were no curtains on the single window overlooking an alleyway. As Anthony put his hands on me and started to undress me while he nuzzled his face into the hollow of my neck, I was looking around the room, redecorating it into something more luxurious in my mind as the potential new partner in this venture.

Anthony stopped in the open doorway, leaning against the doorframe, rubbing his crotch with one hand, and watching as Samuel unwrapped me, released his own cock from his fly, and pushed me down on my knees for me to take a huge, black cock in my mouth and service it.

Anthony had been my first black, but he was mixed blood and of creamy chocolate complexion. Jocko and Samuel were fully Caribbean black—a deep ebony—and of monstrous size—body, hands, feet, and cock. I could barely get my lips around Samuel’s angry, uncut purple bulb, He shuddered and held my head firmly in place as I pushed his foreskin back with my teeth, pressed my tongue into his piss slit, and sucked hard on the bulb. He completed disrobing himself while I gave him head. When he did so, he pulled me up and carried me into the adjoining bathroom—at least all of the brothel rooms had their own bathrooms—and took me into the shower with him.

He was large, there were two of us, and the shower was small, so it was natural for the big, muscular brute to press my back against the tiled wall under the cascading wall, hook my knees on his hips, and fuck me, after a painful up-thrusting stretching of my ass channel by his club of a shaft, with my feet dangling off the shower floor. It was a wild and fully possessing fuck, and I loved very painful-passionate stroke of it.

Anthony, trousers off now, and a hand stroking his cock, had come to the doorway between the bedroom and the bathroom and watched Samuel fucking me.

“How far do you want to go with this?” Samuel asked, after he’d fucked me against the shower wall?

“As far as you want,” I answered.

He laughed. “I was talking to Anthony, but I like your answer just fine.” He turned off the water and pulled me out of the shower. Anthony was there, with two towels, helping to dry us off, fondling me as he did so.

“And Anthony?” Samuel asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Have you ever had two before?”

“Yes.”

“Together? Doubling?”

“Yes.” This was scaring me. Both were big-cocked men. It also was arousing me. Two jet-black monster shafts working me together. I melted to the idea.

Standing behind me, embracing me, a hand snaking around my belly and grasping and stroking my cock in the bathroom door, Anthony watched a magnificently naked Samuel walk over to the bureau. He lifted a set of restraints from the surface of the bureau and gave me a questioning look.

“Sure,” I said. He then picked up the hand whip. “If that’s what you want,” I said.

It was what Anthony wanted. Samuel went down on his back on the bed, his legs reaching the floor at the foot of the bed. I was put on his cock, on top of him, and my arms were raised and spread, tied off the corners of the headboard with restraints on the wrists. My legs were spread and retrained to the legs of the bed at its foot on each side. For several minutes Samuel grasped my hips and raised me, fully his captive, on and off his thick cock. While Samuel fucked me, Anthony stood behind me and gave me a taste of the whip on the back and buttocks.

In time Anthony folded his now-naked body over my back, kissing me on the shoulder blades and in the hollow of my neck. His fingers went to my anus and he penetrated on either side of Samuel’s thrusting dick, stretching me even more.

I was whimpering and panting hard when Anthony opened the bottle of poppers and waved it under my nose. That settled me down into a mellow mood, only to come out of that and cry out and jerk on top of Samuel, as Anthony rose from my back, took up the hand whip again and struck me again and again on the back, buttocks, and thighs.

I was whimpering and panting hard when he put the whip aside; mounted me from the rear; penetrated me, sliding his cock into me above Samuel’s; and they fucked me into counterpunching rhythm.

“So . . .” I said afterward when we’d all showered again and were dressing.

“Yes, you’ll do nicely as a partner,” Samuel said. “Your singing will bring them in, and if you do for them here upstairs that you’ve just done for Anthony and me, you’ll keep them coming and paying big fees. We’ll bring in some more young men, of course, better quality then the current owner has. We’ll make a bundle.”

And, with that, I was in business and picking up a new life on St. Croix.

* * * *

I had retreated to my rental bungalow overlooking the Frederiksted pier on St. Croix to decide what to do. I had been on the island for six months. I’d gone into business with Samuel on Francine’s bar and male brothel. Everything had been working out fine. Then I noticed the two men hanging around. They looked much too uptight and out of place on St. Croix to be locals. I saw them in the bar once—but I don’t think they saw me. They were talking to one of our bartenders, who also was one of our rent-boys. But neither showed an interest in taking him upstairs. In fact, they weren’t acting like any of the other patrons in the bar who knew this was a gay bar. They seemed uncomfortable being here. I watched them for some time through the spyhole between my office and the bar.

After they’d gone, I talked to the guy at the bar and, in shock, heard that they were asking about Dale Stephens. I wasn’t Dale Stephens now, but I had been Dale Stephens in my earlier life in Las Vegas. I started keeping to the shadows then, and after I’d seen them on the gay bar stretch of King Street twice more, I retreated to my hillside bungalow, grateful that I hadn’t told anyone in my business where I lived. Of course Anthony Hendricks knew. He wasn’t here in the U.S. Virgin Islands, on St. Thomas, the main island. I decided to call him.

“I was about to call you,” he said. “There were men here asking about Dale Stephens and suspiciously describing a young man and circumstance that matched you. I didn’t tell them anything, but there are others in the bank—”

“Yes, that would have to do with me. Did they say who they represented?”

“They had U.S. government credentials, although I don’t have any means to check out whether or not they were authentic. I’m afraid someone might have told them to try St. Croix. When Ivan Sarnov called, I told him you were on St. Croix, but he’s the only one I’ve told.”

“I think they did find out I’m on St. Croix. That’s why I called. I think they are here, looking for me. Can I touch the money in my account with you if I leave the islands?”

“Of course. No problem,” he answered.

That was a relief I thought, as I disconnected. But it still didn’t solve the problem of where I could go and how I could get there. I had plenty of cash to get a new start, but would they have the airports covered? And were they really from the government, looking into Sergey’s death, or were they Russian mafia interested in cleaning up for Sergey’s death?

I went out on my front balcony and stared down into the water off the pier while I let my mind work over options and possibilities. There was a fantastic yacht out there coming up to the pier. I took the binoculars I kept on the porch to watch the activity down on the coast and checked out the yacht.

I recognized him coming off the yacht—Ivan Starnov. How did he fit into my current situation? Was he a way off the island, or had he sent the men who were looking for me? Of all of the people from Las Vegas, he had come the closest to seeming to care about and for me—even more than Sergey ever had. But was he concerned about me personally or was he concerned about the various accounts Sergey had stashed here and about, including a hefty sum with me? What part, if any, had he had in Sergey’s death.

He arrived here in a yacht. He could take me away in it—away from danger—if he wanted to. He’d taken the effort to set me up here. Would he have done that if he wanted me to be fingered from Sergey’s death after he’d gotten Sergey’s stash out of me? Who could tell? Of all of the options in this moment, he seemed to be the best risk, though.

I went back into the bungalow for my cell phone and called up his number. He already was here St. Croix. I might as well tell him where he could find me.

* * * *

The name of the gay nightclub on Calle Condado in downtown San Juan, Puerto Rico, was Alexander’s. It was a piano bar and, with Ivan Sarnov’s help and the assurance that I’ve give the bar a cut of any hook-up money had earned from here, I had landed the job of playing and singing three sets there four evenings a week. I didn’t really need the money—I was getting infusions from the earnings off Sergey’s stash in the Cayman Island bank to cover my expenses. I had a new name and passport. I now was Sean Simpson.

Ivan had come to my rescue a second time. When he’d come to St. Croix on his very nice yacht, he was on his way to open a casino in San Juan for his Russian associates. The casino in Las Vegas had been suddenly closed down amid the heavy rumors that it was Russian mafia owned and the Sergey Sarnov had been offed in some sort of business dispute. The feds were crawling all over the operation there and Sergey’s widow was screaming from the wings about lost money. She and Ivan had gone at each other hard, and the casino’s backers had decided to move Ivan to a new venue. There was every reason to believe Ivan said, that the men zeroing in on me on St. Croix were part of the federal investigation, and he offered to take me to San Juan with him.

So, leaving my situation in the Virgin Islands for Anthony Hendricks to liquidate for me, I climbed aboard Ivan’s yacht and was moving on to yet another new life.

Once on board, of course, Ivan climbed aboard me nonstop for the cruise to Puerto Rico, but I didn’t have any doubts that that was what he wanted in return to help me out of a jam once again.

So, on this night three months later, here I was at the piano at Alexander’s, playing show tunes and singing along. There was a good-looking guy, maybe pushing forty, alone at one table paying close attention to me and I got the distinct impression it wasn’t because I played the piano or sang real nice. This was nothing new. I had the kind of looks that arrested the attention of a certain kind of man—and many women, as well—and nearly half the nights I played in the bar, I went somewhere else after my gigs and lost my clothes for an hour or two before I went home to my small apartment near Ivan’s La Concha Cassio over on Avenida Ashford on Condado Beach.

I was in the middle of my last set and the room was thinning out. There had been two tables of patrons who had stayed over from the second set, though, one a thuggish looking man and a blowsy redhead, distinctive as this was a gay bar; most the couples who came in were all-male, and the other the good-looking, well-built middle-aged guy, who kept giving me the eye. The woman looked a bit familiar to me, and, as I played and sang, I kept wracking my brain on where I might have seen her before. It was probably just on the street here in old San Juan, or maybe she’d come into the bar before in the short time I’d been in place here. But somehow, it seemed to go back further than that.

There were stools around the baby grand piano I played on a platform in one corner of the room and a tip jar on the piano. I wasn’t surprised when the good-looking guy came up and perched on a stool, putting a wad of cash in the tip jar and laying a larger wad of cash beside the jar. He’d been eyeing me “in that way” all night and hooking up with guys like him was part of my job at Alexander’s. The side wad of cash was a proposition for something going beyond playing the piano and singing.

“Do you know any Hoagy Carmichael?” he asked, and, in response, I started playing and crooning “Lazy River.” He smiled and settled in. I switched to “Georgia on My Mind,” and he ordered two Scotches, letting his fingers linger on my wrist when he placed one of them on the coaster above the keyboard that I kept for just such offerings.

“My name is Les,” he said, looking expectantly at me, as I started into “Stardust,” just playing it, not singing it, readily for the short chat of a progressing hookup.

“I’m Sean,” I answered, my new name still unfamiliar to me.

“Lovely.”

“What is? My name?”

“Everything about you,” he said. “Your piano playing, your singing, you yourself. You are a gorgeous young man. And you’re playing in a gay bar.”

I feigned surprise and lifted my hands off the keyboard. “This is a gay bar?” I asked, giving a gasp but also a saucy smile. “No one told me that.”

He laughed, took one of my hands in his, and pressed his thumb in my palm, rubbing me there. Recognizing the code for a seeking top, I cupped my hand loosely around the thumb, as he moved the digit in and out, mimicking thrusting in the sheath I’d provided.

Seeing that I understood completely what he had in mind, Lex released my hand and I returned them to the keyboard.

“Play something else for me—something that tells me what you have in mind—what you’d be willing to do for me.” When I started playing again, he gave me a quizzical look. “I don’t recognize that song.”

“It’s the best I could think of doing and staying with Hoagy Carmichael,” I said. “It’s called ‘Two Sleepy People.’”

“But you’re not sleepy, are you? Because I’m not.”

“No, I’m not sleepy.” It was all pre-hookup banter, but this at least was a fresh approach. He was touching me on the forearm and it was sending chills up my spine. There were times when going with a john was “just because of work.” This wasn’t one of those times. The man was sexy and I was in heat.

“You’re about to come off work, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not sleepy, but you are thinking of a bed? I know I am.” I reached for the wad of bills he’d laid beside the tip jar and fanned them out for me to see. It was more than enough—way more than enough how sexy, and big, and muscular, and good-looking he was. He was a good bit older than I was, but I liked it that way. He took one of my hands off the keyboard and moved it to his crotch. He was big there too—and in arousal.

“Yes, I’m thinking of a bed,” I said. “And, no, I’m not sleepy.”

“You’re thinking of a bed and another man?”

“Yes.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that? No coyness.”

“When I’ve met a sexy man, I don’t need to be coy,” I answered. I had reached the end of my set. He was the only patron left in the bar. The thug and the blowsy redhead were gone. “I don’t know where you have in mind,” I said.

“When you’ve met a man with money,” he teased.

“That too.”

“I have booked a room right next door—at The Wave Hotel.”

The Wave was definitely gay friendly. It definitely wouldn’t be my first visit there. “That will be fine,” I said, gathering up my gear and pocketing the wad of cash he was buying me with for the next couple of hours—perhaps all night, if we melded well.

As we left the club and turned north for the next building over, The Wave, I caught a glimpse of a car down the block turning its engine and lights on, pulling away from the curve, and gliding slowly toward us. I also caught a look of a woman with red hair in the passenger seat and, frighteningly, what I thought to be the muzzle of a gun raised and her window rolling down. But it was only a glimpse, because we were already at the door of The Wave, and Les, with a hand only my butt, was guiding me off the Calle Condado and into the hotel lobby.

* * * *

Les wasted no time when we got to the room he’d rented at The Wave Hotel. He had me stripped down and bent over the foot of the bed in no time, kneeling behind me and preparing me for mounting. The first fuck was right there, with the larger and older man covering me from above and behind and taking me in a doggy. He had my chest bowed, gripping my wrists, and pulling my arms back—and thrusting, thrusting, thrusting, fucking me thick and deep.

He certainly knew how to do it. And, although forceful, he wasn’t abusive. He knew how to move the two of us in one, smoothly operating unit in the fuck, moving together in the give and take, both concentrating on the shaft stretching and working my channel.

He didn’t come to completion in that position, although I did when he released my wrists, wrapped one arm around my belly to hold me in place bent over the bed, and moved his other hand to gripping and stroking my cock in rhythm with the stroking of his cock inside me. When I’d come, he turned me on the bed, still hovering over me, stripped off his condom, and presented his erection for me take in my throat, which I did, and fucked my throat until he too tensed, jerked, and came, making me gag in swallowing his come.

That all could happen cruelly, but it didn’t. It was all like a coordinated, smooth dance set to romantic music right up to the throbbing release in my throat and gagging on his come. Bent over me, he’d reached down and had three fingers in my anal channel as he fucked my throat, and I came for him again—for his fingertips stroking my prostate—almost simultaneously with him.

He lifted me and laid me on my back of the bed. Then he went off to the bathroom and pissed and showered. When he came back, he didn’t come up onto the bed as I wanted him to—as I was inviting him to do by lying on my back, my legs bent and spread, a pillow shoved under my lower back to raise my pelvis invitingly to his penetration. He was slowly beating his shaft and was in erection when he came back to the bed, and I fully expected him to mount and fuck me again.

But he didn’t—not just then. What he did instead was pull up a straight chair to beside the bed and rock my world.

“I wasn’t told to do that, but I couldn’t resist,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I was told to bring you here. I wasn’t told to fuck you. I was told to pitch you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not a man named Les, and you aren’t just a gay bar entertainer, Sean. You were a gay bar entertainer named Dale in a Las Vegas casino, and I’m a U.S. federal marshal. I’ll remind you that Puerto Rico is U.S. territory, so I’m operating on home ground here.”

“What is that you want?” I asked.

“It isn’t you my people want. It’s Ivan Sarnov. But they think the easiest way to get at him and what he knows is through you. My people don’t want you, but I want you again if, after our little chat, you’ll let me in. Do you think that’s possible, or should I take care of my own need?” He was still stroking his cock. He was still hard as a rock—and long and thick.

“Yes,” I answered, even while doing so being disgusted with myself for wanted cock so much that I concentrated on that rather than what else had brought him to me under false pretenses and how much threat that might be to me. “But what is that the feds want from me. I didn’t have anything to do with Sergey Sarnov’s death.” I did have quite a bit to do with the money he had been stashing away, but I wasn’t about to mention that.

“We don’t give a fuck about Sergey Sarnov’s death. We think his widow had something to do with that, but she’s just going after his money. Other than being in a Russian mafia family, we don’t think she’s involved in what the Russian mafia is doing. But we think Ivan Sarnov is up to his neck in it. And he seems to have a soft spot for you.”

I couldn’t deny that. He’d saved me twice. And he fucked me whenever he could, showing that he was quite taken with me when he did so. Well, I was a bit taken with him too. “You want me to snitch on Ivan?” I asked.

“Essentially. We want you to get even closer to him than you are already. We want to know everything there is to know about the Russian mafia’s casino operations worldwide. We figure working on Ivan and the one he’s running here is a good approach—through you. So, are you going to work with us on this? We don’t think you killed Sergey Sarnov, but the there’s enough evidence there to hang it on you. You have your choices with us here.”

“And I have my choice on whether you come up on this bed and fuck me again?” I asked. As for spying on Ivan, it didn’t seem they were leaving me much choice.

“You do, yes. Fucking you isn’t part of my brief. I just couldn’t resist. I just needed to get you alone to pitch you on becoming our snitch. But if you don’t take care of me again and I have to sit here and jerk myself off, I’ll be one frustrated informant handler. You are going to work under me whether you want to or not. Do you want me to be a frustrated handler?”

“No, you can handle me as you like,” I said.

And Les did just that. I watched as he snapped a condom on, lubed up, came up onto the bed, positioning himself between my spread and bent legs, mounted and penetrated, and took up the fuck again, sliding in thick and deep, and setting up a steady, smooth rhythm of the taking.

As he started to work me, I wondered what his real name was or whether he would remain Les as my handler. That thought was overtaken by my sudden realization of where I had seen the redheaded, blowsy woman before who I had seen in the bar earlier that evening—and the thuggish man who had been with her as well. She was blonde before. It was Sonia Sarnov, the widow. And the man was one of the Russian mafia thugs Sergey had used at the Las Vegas casino. He’d been the one the widow was hanging on at the funeral.

What was it that Les had said about Sonia? That she was concentrating on recovering Sergey’s stash? I still had control of three million dollars’ worth of Sergey’s stash. Sonia and her thug were here for me.

Would the feds protect me from her? I didn’t think that was too likely.

* * * *

“Why are you telling me this?”

I was on the bed in Ivan Sarnov’s suite at the Concha Casino on Condado Beach, on my back, with Ivan stretched out beside me, having just fucked me quite satisfactorily. Afterward I’d told him that the U.S. feds were blackmailing me over the murder of his brother, Sergey, and wanted me to spy on him and the Russian mafia running casinos like this one. I hadn’t held anything back.

“This life is getting too complicated, Ivan,” I answered. “I don’t want to go on with this juggling act. Something has to change. You’ve saved me twice. I want to save you now if there’s a way to do it.”

“You may be right. Sonia is here. She’s and her lover, who was one of Sergey’s bodyguards, are staying here, at the casino. She’s been asking me about you—and about money Sergey stashed with you. I have played dumb about that. I don’t like the man with her, Yuri. I think he may be the one who poisoned Sergey.”

“Sonia’s here?” I asked, feeling panic set in. But I shouldn’t have been surprised. “I saw her, I think. I think she was at the bar last night. I guess she’s found me.”

“Have you ever thought of Cuba?” Ivan asked. “We have a casino in Havana. We could set up there.”

“Cuba? But that’s still hard for Americans to go to—especially more or less permanently, I’ve heard. And how would we get there?”

“You don’t have to be American. I have another identity you can change to—Canadian this time. And my yacht’s here. I keep it ready to go at the San Antonio marina on San Juan Bay. We could sail to Havana. We could do that now. I’ve kept that escape hatch available.”

I had no trouble agreeing to that. “One last thing, though,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Can you have someone deliver the codes for Sergey’s Stash he left with me—the three million that’s left—to Sonia’s room?”

“Why would you do that?”

“I think she’s just after the money. Yet another Russian mafia casino in Havana doesn’t really put us—me—out of her reach if she hasn’t gotten what she’s really after. I think it’s all about Sergey’s stash.”

“I think you’re right. It’s certainly worth a try. I can maybe distract her by turning one of Sergey’s stashes I’m sitting on over to her as well,” he said, as he rolled over on top of me again—for one last time before we set sail again.