The Personal Manager

“You know what I’d really like to be doing?”

Yeah, Eben thought, you’d really like me to be fucking you. But you’re going to dance around the bush before we get there. “No, what?” was what Eben said. He lifted the bar bell from the guy half his age and size with one hand and lowered it back on the stands.

The guy looked good stretched out on the bench below him. He was twenty-four, he said, less than half of Eben’s forty-nine. Nice, male-model face, a sunny blond with a great smile. He had a sleek, smooth runner’s body. He was just in running shorts and shoes. Nice, tight body, no fat on him. Not bulked up like Eben was but a very nice body. There was a lot Eben could do with a body like that. A lot he would do with Brian’s body. The guy was begging for it. If you could stay in body-builder shape even at forty-nine, the possibilities opened up for young men who wanted to take pleasure from your experience.

“It’s such a nice day out this evening—practically no humidity—that I’d really rather be running,” the young man said. He was full of discussion tonight, like he wanted to keep Eben from drifting off to someone else or somewhere else on the gym floor. Houston’s humidity in late June and early July could be oppressive, and, indeed, it was a rare low-humidity day.

Sure, you would, Eben thought, looking down at the sleek runner’s body. “I could go for that too,” he said. If this was Brian’s move to get Eben alone and away from the gym, Eben was all for it.

“You run?” Brian said, looking up at the body-builder’s physique that blew him away. A buzz-cut, superbly fit older guy who’d said he’d been an Army Ranger but had spent most of his life abroad in what would be oilfields in remote areas if he said there was oil underground there. What really had Brian’s juices going was the man’s full-sleeve tattoo covering the left side of his torso and his left arm. A colorful, busy tattoo swirling around from his shoulder blade to cover his bulging left pectoral and running all the way down his arm to his wrist. When you first looked at it it was just a swirl of vibrant colors, but, upon closer inspection, it was a fanciful Oriental dragon, the head resting on the pec. The really arousing aspect to it, though, was the dragon’s tail, which dipped down to the man’s belly and then even further, under the waistband of Eben’s athletic briefs.

The tail carried the eye down Eben’s Zeus-like torso to the waist on the left side and then to speculating where it went from there, and inevitably took the eye to the man’s bulging basket. Brian needed to get out into the evening breeze to cool himself down. He came to the gym to get laid. Going for Eben would be reaching for the top of the manflesh at the gym. He would have thought it would be someone his own age, but, no, Eben, even in his forties, was sex on a stick.

“Yep, I run,” Eben answered. “I’ve run all over the world. Most places I wind up don’t have any other distraction than working out and running up hills—while watching for terrorists.” And fucking sleek young men, Eben added in his thoughts.

“You work in oil?” Brian asked.

“Yes. Finding it. Rocks. Knowing what the rocks on the surface tell us about the likelihood there’s oil below the surface. How much there is; how far down to you have to go to yank it out of the ground. Rocks.” And getting my rocks off with honeys like you, Eben thought.

“Sounds exciting. I’m just a computer nerd—the help desk at Best Buy. Looking for oil. That sounds really interesting. And you were in the army, I hear. A Ranger?”

I don’t have to give you my life story to get my dick in you, I hope, Eben thought. Having been raised by a bizarre family of nomads, following the scent of oil across the Middle East and Central Asia, naming their kids weird names like Ebenezer, making them think that a rough, minimalized life in the deserts was the best a kid could ever want, sticking them in the army—two Afghanistan tours—to toughen them up, and with the only result being that the kid could and did live rough, had trouble figuring out civilization, and could, like his dad before him, look at a landscape and know whether there was exploitable oil under it—how much and how far down. Oh, and being with only men and without women for such long stretches of time that he learns to get his rocks off with men—and eventually decides he likes it better that way.

Men’s needs and wants were simple. They were complicated like women were—especially if you didn’t want entanglements, if you only wanted to get your rocks off and move on.

“You wanta run, let’s do some running,” he said to Brian, putting it on the line. Did Brian want to move forward with this or not? “There’s a loop the gym recommends, mostly through a park.”

So, they went out into the early evening shadows of the Houston suburbs and ran, Brian running like a gazelle and Eben like a lion, but the two maintaining a pace they both liked that kept them comfortably close together. They pulled up at a water fountain at a remote clearing along the running path in a wooded park. They hadn’t seen anyone else in the park for some time.

Brian was making doe eyes at Eben, which Eben didn’t mind and had expected. For some time he wondered which one of them would make the first move. They were both well beyond being surprised that a move would be made—and a deal nonverbally struck, and a fuck completed. He let Brian make the first move.

“Your tattoo. It’s magnificent. Such vibrant colors. A fantastic design. Where did you get it?”

“Tashkent. Spent four months there once. Took nearly the full time to get it completed. I knew what I wanted. I always know what I want.” He’d matched the last comment with a meaningful look at Brian—and wondered why the dummy didn’t pick it up and run with it. “You can touch it if you want.”

Brian did want and he ran his fingers over the tattooing. Eben looked into the younger man’s face while he did it. His “I’m going to fuck you” expression was not challenged by Brian.

“So artistic and clever. And, I gotta say, sexy. Where does that tail lead? So, provocative.” OK, so he is going with it, Eben thought.

Brian traced the design a second time, up from the arm, over the pec—and then the tapering tail, down Eben’s chest, to the waistband. He paused there, just long enough that they both knew he was there.

“Go ahead. I know you want to,” Eben said.

With a little smile Brian glided his finger down to the root of Eben’s cock and said, “It goes down to there, doesn’t it?”

“And further,” Eben said. He turned his face down and put his hands on Brian’s arms, above the elbows, and pulled the younger, smaller man toward him. Brian raised his face, the one to take the initiative, and they kissed. His hand followed his exploratory finger under the waistband and to the older man’s core. He sucked in his breath when he wrapped his fingers around the base of the cock and realized how thick Eben was.

Eben pulled away from the kiss, smiled down into Brian’s face, and said, “Bingo. That’s where the dragon’s tail goes.”

“Fuck me,” Brian whispered. “Let me suck it and then fuck me.”

“You never know who will come along in the park,” Eben said. “Let’s go back to the gym.”

The showers at the gym were individual cubicles, but they had curtains on them. The two embraced, chest to chest, under the cascading water, and kissed. Then Brian sank slowly to his knees, following the body, and then the tail of the dragon down Eben’s torso with his lips, into the older man’s trimmed pubes, the hair kept thin enough not to obscure the tapering of the tail. He encircled the root of the cock, where the end of the tail curled, with a finger and worked on the thick, long, erect cock with his mouth until, with time and effort, his lips were able to touch tail’s end.

It was a quite satisfactory blow job.

Eben lifted the young man up to his feet after he’d given the guy his load. They kissed and soaped each other up, maintaining a close embrace, exploring each other with their hands. Brian leaned his torso back, with one of Eben’s strong arms wrapped around his waist and panted and groaned as Eben penetrated his ass with two thick fingers, soaping and cleaning him as deep as the two fingers could reach, and stroking Brian’s prostate. Brian flinched and came, up Eben’s belly. The cum was washed away by the cascading water and Brian pulled his lithe chest up to Eben’s. They kissed again.

“Fuck me,” Brian whispered. “Put it in me. You’re huge. Stretch me. Make me suffer. Fuck me.”

“There’s an Astro’s game on TV in a half hour. Come home with me.”

“Yes.”

“For the night.”

“Yes.”

“You might not be able to walk tomorrow morning.”

“Walking is overrated.”

* * * *

“Nice house. Very nice house.”

“The oil companies pay well. Here, we’ll go in through the garage.” The house was manageable on two nice oil company salaries. He was down to one and some inherited money, but that wasn’t his real problem with the house.

“I see a couple of shingles have come down up there.”

“That was in that windstorm we had.”

“That was two months ago. You really need to get something like that fixed fast. The roof could leak.”

“It does. Here we go. The family room is through there. I’ll get us a couple of beers.”

Brian noticed that a cabinet door was off its hinges as he walked by the kitchen, which was large, but clean. The man was tidy. He just wasn’t a Mr. Fixit. The kitchen faucet was dripping too. “This is a pretty big house for just you.”

“There was a Mrs. Harrison until three months ago.” He didn’t specify. He didn’t like to think of what Lauren’s last couple of minutes were like when her plane went down near Chicago. She’d always been terrified of flying and had avoided travel. As a company headquarters lawyer she hadn’t had to do much traveling. She was the homebody, the home manager. Eben was the one who traveled and was gone for extended periods. “I’m doing the home alone thing. I like the house, but I’m gone a lot. And I never learned home maintenance. Here’s your beer.”

He handed Brian a beer and then turned toward the large-screen TV on the wall facing the sofa. He went from one remote to the other. “Shit, I never could decide which one I needed for what.”

“Here, it should be this one.” Brian separated out the right remote, turned the TV on, and found the channel running the Houston Astros and Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game. The game was in the second inning. “The beer isn’t what I need now, though,” he said, as in two smooth moves he’d pulled his T-shirt over his head and stripped his shorts and jock off his legs. He stretched out on his back across the sofa cushions, naked.

Eben went down on his knees on the floor in front of the sofa. He liked giving surprise, so he started off slow and tender, stroking Brian’s inner thighs until, sighing, and whispering, “You’ve got me so fuckin’ hot. Fuck me, please fuck me,” the young man opened his legs, resting the calf of one on the top of the sofa back and moving the other over Eben’s head and hooking it on Eben’s shoulder. Eben leaned his head down, took Brian’s cock in his mouth, and gave him head.

Brian was sighing and moaning and running the fingers of one hand through the spikes of Eben’s salt-and-pepper buzz cut and touching the dragon full-sleeve tattoo here and there and there, when Eben rose from the floor, came down on his knees between Brian’s thighs, and grasped the young man’s hips between his hands.

Brian exclaimed in surprise and pain as Eben positioned his cock head and both thrust up into Brian’s passage and pulled the young man’s pelvis onto the cock and began immediately stroking hard and deep. This was the way they did it in the tents out in the barren landscape around Tashkent. Hard, fast, brutal, with little preparation. Eben liked opening a tight channel.

Brian was flopping around on the cock, holding Eben’s head for dear life, alternating between trying to push Eben off him and pulling Eben into him, arching his back and crying out “Yes, yes. Like that. Deeper. Oh, shit yes. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Brian hadn’t had it like this ever before, but this . . . this was fucking. This was what had attracted Brian to Eben in the first place—the hint of danger and cruelty, the possibility that the man would totally fuck him.

Eben did just that—fuck, fuck, fuck. Houston’s Carlos Lee hit a grand-slam homer in the bottom of the third and Eben was right there with him, tensing, jerking, exploding, once, twice, three and four times, filling the bulb of his rubber, Brian gasping and jerking, going all the way over the wall with him.

“You want something to eat? I want something to eat,” Eben said, rising from the sofa after both of them had come. Brian just lay there, legs and arms akimbo, on his back on the sofa. He looked up at Eben, towering over him, a huge cock swinging between his legs. The young man’s eyes were glazed over. There was a slight smile on his face. He was panting softly and blowing bubbles. He didn’t respond to the question. He wasn’t ready for that. After a taking like that, there should be some decompression cuddling and hand play, he thought. Eben was so matter-of-fact about sex.

He was still lying there, in that position, when Eben padded back in, naked, body magnificent, cock erect again, from the kitchen. It was in the bottom of the fifth on the TV. It was raining heavily, with wind, outside the house.

Brian gave a small moan and Eben leaned over the sofa and turned the young man onto his belly. Brian mumbled something unintelligible as Eben mounted his ass. He groaned and grunted as Eben slid his cock into the young man’s channel, and he panted and moaned as Eben hovered over him, palming Brian’s shoulder blades and began riding him hard.

Carlos was up to bat again in the sixth when there was a flash of light outside, a big bang, and the electricity went out. Eben continued fucking Brian to his completion and then sank to his butt between the sofa and the coffee table, raised the can of beer he hadn’t touched yet, took a swig and grimaced because the beer was warm, and then took another swig.

“God you give good fuck,” Brian whimpered from the sofa.

“We’re not done yet.”

Brian moaned. “You fuck your wife like this too?”

“Yes . . . well, as much. Maybe not as rough.” And he had fucked her a lot. He and Lauren had had a good sex life—when he’d been home. And she was everything else too. There wasn’t anything that Lauren wasn’t good at. She kept this place in tip-top condition, for instance.

“So, you must have had a crowd of kids.”

“No,” Eben said, the regret clear in his voice. “We couldn’t have any. And we both had careers.” He didn’t know why they hadn’t had any. They’d never tried to find out. Guess he’d never been home long enough to look into that. If Lauren had had herself checked out, she never told him.

“You had it good with your wife, but you fucked guys too? This wasn’t a one-off and you aren’t new to this.”

“I went to some pretty remote places and stayed for a while. There wasn’t much to do there, but the conditions could get pretty hairy—dangerous. High tension. There weren’t many women. There were a lot of horny guys, though. Tough guys. Guys who could take it hard.”

I can believe it, Brian thought. Just the thought of what had just happened to him in the control of Eben made him whimper.

Eben grabbed the words just like Brian had said them, which he hadn’t. “It just happened—going with guys as well as my wife. There were no other women than my wife. Just guys. Guys as desperate for it as I was. Guys who recognized it was an animal need and took it that way. It was completely separate from what I had with my wife, though. I was gone from here a lot. With the job. I need another beer and yours will be too warm to drink. I’ll get us a couple of more.” That was enough of that conversation. He hauled himself up and stumbled his way to the kitchen, knowing pretty much what was where to avoid.

“Lights are back on,” Brian said.

“No they’re not,” Eben said, in a “stating the obvious” voice.

“Everywhere else. I can see lights outside. Are you on a different line from your neighbors?”

“Beats the shit out of me. I’m a rocks and oil guy, not an electricity guy.”

“Maybe the lightning flipped a breaker in your box.”

“Whatever that means,” Eben answered. “The light’s out in the refrigerator too.”

“That would happen when the electricity is out,” Brian said. The smile on his unseen face was obvious. “Where’s your breaker box?”

“Beats me. Maybe in Cleveland?”

“House like this, it’s probably in the garage—or basement.”

“I don’t think we have a basement.”

“But you don’t know?”

“I don’t spend much time here.”

“Fuck.” Brian laughed. “Don’t suppose you know if you have a flashlight either.”

“Yeah, Keep one right here. My wife insisted on keeping it here. I’d sometimes leave it someplace else and she’d always return it here.” A light went on and Brian pulled himself off the sofa and padded toward the kitchen. The beam of light picked out his groin.

“Shit, you’ve got a great body. I could fuck you right here on the kitchen floor.”

“Yes, you could,” Brian said as he drew within arms’ length of the big man.

So, that’s what Eben did. He put Brian on all fours on the kitchen floor, mounted his tail, and fucked him in a doggie. Brian panted for him like a dog and even barked a couple of times.

After they got off the floor, Brian said, “Shit that was hot. You’re a fuckin’ animal. But what did I come in here for? Oh, yes, flashlight.” He took it from Eben and then said, “Breaker box,” and went off in the direction of the garage.

“Don’t get lost,” Eben said. “I don’t think we’re finished for the night.”

“Wouldn’t think of it, Stud,” Brian said from somewhere other than the kitchen. After a minute the lights came back on. The game was in the last of the eighth inning. Houston was comfortably ahead, the Carlos Lee bag-clearing homer from early in the game still being the margin of the lead.

Brian went through the first-floor rooms, checking to see if everything was back on electricity wise.

“You got a lot of maintenance needs in this house,” he said when he came back.

“A lot can deteriorate in three months,” Eben said. “I never had to do anything about keeping a house going.”

“You need to sign up with a maintenance company.”

“Yeah, I do. Not just this minute, though.”

Brian laughed. “You’re going to do me again, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m going to do you again. Right this minute.”

Brian shivered but he kept talking. “In the study—I think it’s your study—the computer was blinking at me.”

“Yeah, it’s been that way. I don’t know what’s wrong with it.”

“Fixing computers. That’s what I do—”

“Other than taking an eight incher?”

Brian laughed. “Yeah, other than that. I fix computers. I’ll give it a look.” He went back down the hallway to the study and paused at the door there to call out. “Tell me something. That. What you did with . . . to me . . . tonight—on the sofa; on the kitchen floor. That’s sort of wild. No, not sort of wild. Really wild.”

“You didn’t want it that way? You don’t want it that way?”

“God, I’ve never been fucked that good before. But it’s intense. How often do you do a guy that way?”

“Not often . . . here in the States. In the oilfields it’s how we do it. And I haven’t had it in several weeks and you’re a real honey. And you were a bit of a tease. I wanted to get right to it. But overseas, in the oilfields. In Saudi Arabia or Tashkent? I tear them apart there—and they love it and come back asking for it again. So, what? I said I’d be doing you again. Yay or nay? You took it. You’re well used; you’re no fresh innocent. Yay or nay? If I do you again, I won’t take any prisoners. This is my wild animal night.”

“And if I say nay, you won’t just grab me and take what you want?”

“Yay or nay?”

There was a pause, but then Brian said, “Yay,” and continued on into the study.

“So, do you want me just to grab you and take you?”

Another slight pause. “Yes, I want you just to grab me and take me. Let’s see about this computer first, though.”

Eben took a beer back into the family room, plopped down onto the sofa and watched the rest of the baseball game. It went into two extra innings, and the Diamondbacks came back to win. Eben switched off the set—luckily Brian had left the correct remote separate from the others—and went back to the study.

“Just about got it fixed,” Brian said, looking up. He could clearly see that Eben was in erection again. “It should be just a few minutes and I’ll have it . . . Hey.”

Eben pulled Brian up from the chair, threw him over his shoulder, mounted the stairs to the master bedroom on the second floor, tossed the younger man onto the bed, mounted his ass, and fucked the shit out of him. Brian loved it. He’d never been taken caveman style before—well, not before he came to this house with Eben.

* * * *

“The reroofing and a bit of plumbing and electrical work. And the gutters are clogged. I put the cabinet door here in the kitchen back on while I was taking stock in here. That wasn’t much of an effort. There’s a lot to be done here, but we can either do it all ourselves or contract it out. I see that you’ve signed up for the full home management package. That covers the management side of the work but the costs of the work itself . . .” The young man paused and looked at Eben, sitting across from him at the kitchen island.

“I can afford it and I want to have it all done,” Eben said. At least he hoped and assumed he could afford it. That was something else he hadn’t done. He hadn’t even gone in Lauren’s office and god knows how he was going to grasp her filing system and the status of his finances. He hadn’t even cleared up the benefits from her having died on the job. Her sister had come and taken care of all of the funeral arrangements or he would have been lost on that. He had been called back on short notice from Libya. That young man, Samir, had clung to him at the airport and he’d been moving like a zombie.

“Of course it’s an ongoing need, you know. I don’t know how long this has been—”

“Yes, I understand that,” Eben said, his voice tired. This was all beyond him, and he was both embarrassed and despondent that he had let himself get so clueless on taking care of a house—or much of anything. “You can go ahead and make arrangements and take notes on what will go next and need attention. I don’t think the clothes dryer works. Three months. This happened in just three months.”

“Three months?”

“Yes. My wife died and I was in Libya on assignment—I work for an oil discovery and extraction company. Internationally. But the truth is that it doesn’t matter where I was. When I was on location, we had maintenance men who handled it all. My wife had always taken care of all of this on the home front.” This was the first time he’d flat out said to a complete stranger that his wife hadn’t just left him—she’d died. Somehow, saying it took a little of the burden off. “She died in that airplane accident near Chicago that was all over the news. It was sudden. One minute there, the next minute gone. No chance to make any preparations. I can’t even bear to go into her home office.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Harrison. Should I maybe come back later? I’m really sorry. We can take this slower.” Eben looked at the young man. He wished he could think of a great-looking guy like this in any other way than topping him, but he couldn’t help it. He’d have a ball topping this honey.

“No, let’s hear it all on what needs to be done from here. Maybe getting it done can go a little slower, though. What really needs to be done yesterday?”

“Well, as I said, you’re now signed up for full coverage, so we’ll take care of it all in logical order for as long as you remain here and keep the contract up.”

Looking at you would help me keep it up, was Eben’s first thought. But then he told himself to get a grip. The guy was here to help him get this place back in order. He thinks I should move, Eben thought. He thinks this is too much for me even with his company managing the upkeep.

“You think I should just move?”

“I think you made a good decision calling us in,” the young man answered. “I understand it’s not a good idea to make any big decisions like moving for the first year.”

The young man, Michael Sharp, was resting his forearm on the countertop. Was he extending sympathy, offering condolences? Or something more. He was a handsome young man. Eben had heard the truck come into the driveway and had gone to his bedroom window. The young man who had exited the van, the young man who was to handle the inventory of what needed to be done to the house to bring it back up to working level and then to watch over the management contract was younger than Eben had expected. He also was more of a hunk—medium height, very well built, moved with the grace of a cat. Dark haired, maybe partly Hispanic. Hair pulled back in a ponytail. Eben was fighting the desire to reach out and let the young man’s hair down.

That Eben had contacted a house management company—even that he had found out that such a thing existed—had been fortuitous. Brian had mentioned such a company when he’d been here, and just earlier this week there had been a brochure advertising such a company put in Eben’s mailbox. He’d called the company and then went in and had a contract within two days of seeing the brochure.

Eben’s first reaction was to start going hard and to image letting the young man’s hair down and running his fingers through it as he covered him. But then he was irritated with himself. Why was it that he was assessing all young men he encountered these days as a sex partner—a sex conquest? Was this part of his reaction to being so suddenly left alone? Before now, he’d been able to compartmentalize his sex activity, although it was true that the season brought it out of him. He called it his summer lovin’ phase. It came around every year at this time. The young men were only for while he was on temporary duty overseas, and then mainly in the summer, where he could take them out on a hillside and lay them good. He used them and they wanted to be used.

That wasn’t completely true—that it only happened in the field—or only in the summer. There were a couple of gay bars he went to here, but when he got a blow job or laid a young man, it was always at a cheap motel or in a gay cruising club. Brian was the first young man he’d brought to the house.

And his main impression from Brian’s visit two weeks earlier was that the house was falling down around his head and he had to do something about it—get someone to manage the house’s needs or move into a condo apartment. He didn’t want to leave the house. He was comfortable here—and not just living here. He was comfortable with the memories here. Like this Michael had just said, Lauren’s sister had told him not to make any changes for a year—not to make life-changing decisions for a while. He thought she was right.

“Another sandwich?” he asked, pushing the plate toward Michael. The young man had made his assessment, which ran up to lunchtime. He’d said he could come back after lunch to discuss what needed to be done with Eben, but Eben was eating alone too much of the time these days. He’d invited the young man to talk over lunch here, and, a bit to his surprise, Michael had accepted.

“Will you be the one who does the managing?” he asked. He didn’t know whether he wanted that or not. The young man was a temptation.

“For the rest of the summer at least,” Michael said. “And that should get everything that needs attention right now back in order. I’ll be a junior at the University of Houston in September. It’s close enough that I could keep this assignment longer than that if we get it down to just ongoing maintenance—and if I get a room somewhere between here and the university.”

“I hope that can be arranged,” Eben said, avoiding looking directly at Michael, because he couldn’t deny to himself that he was having urges for the young man and didn’t want to reveal them. He’d been told that he was an open book with young men. In many ways that was an advantage. If they were interested too, there wasn’t much doubt to work through. Mostly the question became who was going to top, but with Eben’s looks and personality that wasn’t much of a question either. He was a take-control power top and usually the other guy quickly understood that.

“I hope so too.”

“Well,” Eben said, standing up from the counter, “I know I can afford it, but I’d better dig into the paperwork my wife left—she handled all that too; she was a lawyer and was the one who stayed based in Houston. I’ll have to do some research to see what is where and what accounts to touch.”

“I’ll just be a while longer. But I’ll be back. I can come tomorrow, Saturday, if you’ll be here. Or I can hold off until Monday.”

“Better make it Monday,” Eben said. He hadn’t had plans before, but Michael had made him horny. Eben would be cruising tonight and, who knows, there might be someone in his bed tomorrow morning. Best not to reveal his interests to Michael like that—or that soon. Shit, he thought, why can’t I stop thinking about making this guy? It would not be a good thing to play this close to home—even if the guy is all that I like to spike.

* * * *

Eben took himself to the Eagle on Hyde Park that Friday night. The place had a good mix of leather, for which he himself often was taken when he went into a gay bar, especially on nights like this when he wore a white mesh T-shirt that clearly showed off his dragon full-sleeve tattoo, and young preppy types. What was good about this bar was that it was where young preppy types came for a thrill with a guy in leather. Unless they took a wrong turn at some point, they came in here for hookups where they would be manhandled. Eben wore tight black leather jeans. He was looking for someone who was looking for him—for something like they’d get in the tents and on the hillsides in the fields around Tashkent.

It surprised him who he found.

He was sitting at one end of the bar, turned to the dance floor and watching the guys dancing. A few of them were watching him watch them dancing, and he didn’t think it would take him long to pick someone up he could fuck hard in his car, release the sexual tension that gripped him, and still get home in time to get a good night’s sleep.

Not long after he leaned into one end of the bar, though, he saw the home management guy, Michael Sharp, come in and sit at the other end of the bar. That surprised him. Although he’d been aroused by Michael earlier that day, which was what prompted him to go on the prowl tonight, he hadn’t sensed that coming back at him from Michael. It came back at him now, though. It didn’t take long for their eyes to make contact. Michael’s expression was a smoldering one. Eben had been served a beer; Michael hadn’t flagged down a bartender yet to order one. Eben lifted his beer and gave Michael a querying look, and he got the response he wanted. They halved the distance between them and met in the middle of the bar.

“Buy you a beer?” Establish yourself as being in command right off the bat was Eben’s mantra. If a guy let you buy them a drink in a bar like this, you had started the dance of hooking up.

“Sure, thanks.”

“I’m surprised to see you in here. I didn’t get a hint of interest in anything like this earlier today. But then maybe it was just me you weren’t interested in,” Eben said. He didn’t have all night to cruise. There might be a shot with this guy. This was the guy who had caused Eben to come out looking for a lay tonight. But if this wouldn’t work out, Eben needed to move on to a hookup that would. He’d already seen three guys in the bar who looked at him like they’d be easy pickings—and were fairly good to look at.

“I’m not surprised,” Michael said. “I’ll be completely honest with you. Are you paying for this beer because you saw someone you knew in here and want to be friendly or are we talking negotiating a fuck hookup? Are you interested in fucking me?”

“I’m interested in fucking you. I was looking for something easy and fast tonight—because you turned me on at the house earlier—but you’re revving well ahead of me here. The mantra is that the top isn’t closing the deal until the submissive accepts the second beer.”

“And you don’t like that—that I’m moving right to the punchline?”

“I like that fine. Simple and easy. Rocks off all around. But why aren’t you surprised to see me in here?”

“The short version, because I’d really, really like to get to it. I know where the tail of that dragon is going.”

“You know about the dragon?”

“Yes. Confession time. Brian is a friend of mine. He told me about the wild night he had with you. He also told me you needed help with your house desperately or it was going to land on your head. I put the brochure in your mailbox. I volunteered to take your house assignment. I want what Brian got.”

“Brian got it really rough and a lot. I was in a state, so he got the whole enchilada. You sure that’s what you want?”

“Yeah, that’s what I want.”

“So, you’re not really interested in managing the maintenance on my house.”

“Yes. That part’s exactly as presented. And that’s why I was all business at the house. I want to do the house manager bit. I’d just like some fringe benefits with it. I want to meet the dragon.”

They were both so anxious that Eben fucked Michael in the car, in the garage, before they moved into the house. The automatic car door mechanism balked at first when Eben pulled into the garage and tried to close the door behind him. It finally worked but while Eben was fiddling with it and muttering, “another fucking breakdown,” Michael was all over him with his hands, pulling at his clothes and saying, “I want to see it. I want to see the dragon. I want to see where the tail goes.”

“Give me a minute to get the fuckin’ door closed,” Eben growled. But he also was laughing and was pulling at Michael’s clothes.

“I’ll add that to the ‘get it fixed’ list. But first the dragon . . . shit is that where it ends up? Shittin’ cool. God. Shit. Fuckin’ shit. Yes! Spike me. Put it in! YES! Oh shit! Give it to me. Give it to me!”

Eben gave it to him.

There was little room in the front seat with the console between the seats, and it couldn’t have been comfortable, but they managed—or, rather, Eben managed to get Michael into a position where his erection could bury itself in Michael’s hole and pump him hard, and Michael was flexible enough to hold the position, his arms thrown over his shoulders, with his hands gripping the rim of the door where the window had retracted down, and the heel of one foot on the dashboard and the other leg draped over Eben’s shoulder, as Eben crouched over him and thrust and thrust and thrust to their first in a series of ejaculations that night.

Eben fucked him on the sofa in cramped missionary in front of the TV set that didn’t get turned on and where Eben had offered a round of beers that never got delivered.

Then he fucked him on the stairs leading up to the bedroom level in a modified doggie, and then, when they finally got to the master bedroom, Eben fucked Michael a couple of more time, once with Michael on his side, legs drawn up and held together, while Eben lay across his hips crosswise and fucked him sideways. He hit all of the surfaces of the young man’s passage with the bulb of his cock.

The next morning they were hunting for and finding used condoms in some very strange places.

Sitting at the kitchen island across from each other in the morning, both naked, the hands of both shaky as they cradled cups of strong black coffee and grinned at each other like school boys who had just done something very, very naughty was a lot different from how the scene had looked there the previous day over lunch. Now they each knew every intimate detail of the other’s body.

“You mentioned something about needing to find a room near here before your school started,” Eben said. “I have extra bedrooms here.”

“I know. I think we fucked in every one of the them.”

“There are two downstairs we haven’t done it in yet,” Eben said. “We can fix that after this infusion of coffee, though.”

Michael groaned. “You’re an animal. A wild animal.”

“You said Brian told you I was and that that was the way you wanted it.”

“It was; it is. Are you offering me a place to live?”

“It would make wild fucking a lot more convenient. And you’d be right here when something broke down. Do you know where the breaker box is, by the way?”

“Of course. It’s in the garage. I think my foot banged it a couple of times while you were banging me in the car. I have no idea how we managed that.”

“Good boy. You pass the house maintenance quiz.”

“I don’t know if I can afford the rent here, though,” Michael said. “I don’t want to sponge on you. But, there’s some way we could take care of it in barter.”

“Four fucks a week to offset the rent?”

“I don’t think I could survive that. But let’s go for five and see how that goes. But, no, I don’t want to be a prostitute. The fucking should be free. But I didn’t tell you, what I’m taking in college is accounting. I think I heard you say you are as clueless and behind the eight ball with your financial accounting as with the home maintenance. In addition to managing the house management, I could be your personal manager—I could handle your financials too. In exchange for room . . . and some board.”

“Deal.” God, this is turning out a whole lot better than I could ever imagine, Eben thought. The trifecta. I got it all now.

“Let’s seal the deal with a fuck,” Michael said. “Maybe initiate one of the downstairs bedrooms?”

“Paradise,” Eben said, with a grin.

“One thing, though,” Michael said.

“No reneging now. I just bought your ass.”

“No, no reneging, but one thing I promised Brian I’d ask you if I scored with you—Did I score with you?”

“Yes, you most certainly scored with me, Michael.”

“One other thing. Brian wonders if he could come over from time to time and we do a threesome.”

Eureka! “That sounds very much like something a personal manager should be setting up for me, Michael.”