Delivery

"I don't understand," I said.

"Oh, I think you do, Craig. I think you've understood for some time. Maybe you haven't wanted to intellectualize it. But I think you well understand why I called you to come here when Jenna was an ocean and a continent away. This won't change anything, of course. I have no intention of leaving Jenna."

"This? What's this?" I asked.

He just gave me a sardonic "you dunce" look until I no longer could avoid understanding what he meant.

"But . . . why now?" I asked in a low voice.

"I'm tired of shopping on the street, looking for young men who remind me of you and then disappointing me when they aren't you. It's particularly galling during the holidays." His voice sounded strained—as if that was one of the darkest secrets he possessed. And perhaps it was. I had no illusions how hard it was for Tyler to give up a secret. I knew—and appreciated—how hard this was for him.

For just a second, but not more than that, he let the mask drop away from his face and I saw the raw pain and want in his eyes. But it was just for a second, and then we were back to the guarded, patrician Tyler, Harvard and Oxford graduate and office fair-haired boy, whose wit and sharp tongue were a sure defense.

But this was vintage Tyler too, especially with subordinates. He who baldly stated what he wanted—and got it. He wasn't going to beg me, and I knew better than to expect him to. And I wasn't going to walk out of the apartment until he'd gotten what he wanted.

He let his statement hang in the air, as he took a swig of his martini and a couple of drags on his cigarette. I couldn't continue looking at his face, hoping beyond hope that I'd see that vulnerability and want in him again, because it had flickered there so briefly. He certainly knew how to read me, though. I couldn't hide my vulnerability to and want of him in my eyes. So I looked away—to the windows. It was snowing even more heavily on Q Street now. It would be a bear just to get my car out of the parking space on the narrow street and to drive through the drifts across the Potomac to the Virginia suburbs tonight.

Of course I was rationalizing. Which was silly, because there were no decisions for me to make here. This was Tyler—and Tyler's turf.

Tyler stood up from his chair and carefully, deliberately set his martini glass down on the small table beside his chair and placed the red-ash-tipped cigarette—not yet finished, the only signal in the room of his sense of urgency from a man who carefully finished off everything—in an ashtray.

"I'll be in the bedroom when you are ready to come. The main bath is off hallway to the left. Use the beige towels."

He'd left the light on in the bathroom, which was across the hallway from what obviously was a home office den. There were two more doors on either side off the hallway farther on. Two bedrooms, I surmised. I gave a smile, but it was a nervous little smile, when I saw that he had laid out an anal douche bulb on top of a beige washcloth on the bathroom counter.

So, he was going to top me. We hadn't cleared that up. It didn't matter to me. I went both ways—and no doubt he knew that. But it was a testament to the sudden impact this had had on me that I hadn't even thought about it.

I certainly had cleared that up with the Belgian diplomat the previous night before we had gone up to his hotel room. But he had wanted it both ways and, after pleading that I be gentle with him, which I was, hadn't come anywhere close to being gentle with me. He had treated me like a common whore and had repeatedly called me that as he was fucking me. And I couldn't say he was wrong. But he had given us what we wanted. So, there were worse ways of being a whore than the one I practiced, I thought.

Night lights were glowing in both bedrooms at the end of the hall. The bedroom on the right obviously was the master bedroom, but I didn't expect to find Tyler in there. And of course I was correct. Even I would have been too uncomfortable having sex in Jenna's bed to perform.

The bedroom on the left had two twin beds in it. Tyler was lying on his back on the bed against the far wall. He was covered with a sheet, but I knew he was naked. His trousers and smoking jacket were neatly folded on the bed closer to the door.

He was looking straight up at the ceiling, his eyes glistening. Were those tears?

I had walked down the hall naked and stood in the doorway to the bedroom, backlit by the dim light in the hall. I wanted him to look at me. He could have had this any time in the last eight years. Now that I was here, and our mutual want was out in the open, I could acknowledge to myself that I had wanted him from the first. I knew I looked good and was well equipped. I wanted him to look at me, and I wanted to hear the intake of breath that assured me that he regretted the years of holding back.

I had thought of Jenna while I sat in the living room, briefly watching the fire blaze in the grate of the fireplace and the snow fall and the Christmas lights on the row house opposite blinking on and off beyond the living room windows, bringing rhythmic pulses of red and blue into the room. The rhythmic pulsing of the colors brought to mind the Belgian's hand on my knee in the hotel bar and then of the rhythm of the fuck, and I could see Tyler in that image, but not Jenna. Quite suddenly I saw Tyler and another man. Me? But if Tyler had been seeking it on the street . . .

No, Jenna could just watch out for Jenna herself. I knew a thing or two about Jenna's sex life too. And not just with men. At this moment, I hoped that she had continued with that—that the attraction the two had to each other wasn't dependent on the sexual. But even that didn't matter.

Guilt was of no use. Tyler had given instructions. Tyler always was to be obeyed. I could easily envision Tyler very reasonably voicing to Jenna that he had decided to take me on as a male mistress and her answering, "If you wish," and the two going on with their life together just as it was—without Jenna resenting either him or me. Perhaps that too was just rationalization on my part.

He knew that I was there, posed in the doorframe, but he didn't turn to look at me. He wasn't going to give me even that satisfaction.

"Come here," he said. He voice was hoarse. So, at least there was that much. A slight chink in the armor.

I walked slowly over to the bed, as he sat up on the side of the mattress and brushed the sheeting away. This bedroom was on the same side of the apartment as the living room was and the drapes were drawn back on the window, so the same pulsing of the red and blue Christmas lights invaded this chamber.

His cock was long and, like him, on the thin side. And it was in full erection, running up his flat belly as he sat on the side of the bed. His hairless torso, except for a thin patch at the pecs, was that of a runner—lean but well muscled and that of a much younger man than I knew him to be.

I felt a stab of irritation. Even in this he led a charmed life of fulfilled falsity. I knew his schedule permitted no time for exercise. All of this had been given to him without any effort required on his part. I had to work ten hours a week to maintain my conditioning. And he was twenty years older than me. The man ate whatever rich food he fancied and drank like a fish. I hated and resented that in him. I was no less aroused by him, however, for all of that undeserved reward.

But then I saw them. I'd been told he had them, but, knowing how office legends went, I only half believed. Two scars on his torso, near his left side, just above and to the left of his navel. Bullet wounds. Proof both that his continued life had been charmed and that it had been all too real. Life could get all too real for people in our profession. Seeing the puckered wounds there heightened my arousal, my sense of adventure and risk.

I reached out for the wounds with the fingers of a hand, seeking something raw and genuine in him. But my fingers had barely brushed the scars when he enveloped me with his arms and drew me into his torso, between his spread legs. He buried his face into my belly. I heard the muffled sob and felt the wet tears on my belly.

I wrapped my own arms around his neck, my hands cupped his perfectly cut hair, and I kissed the top of his head. We rocked back and forth in place. I felt the urgency of him against my thighs. He no doubt felt mine running up his sternum.

Just like that, all was forgiven. He could have anything he wanted. The chip in the armor was a chasm. He would have possessed me anyway—by right and the power of his position and personality—but I surrendered all, willingly.

His mouth moved down to cover the bulb of my cock, which he sucked between snuffles until we were both heated up and consumed by throbbing need. His lips slid down the shaft, inhaling me, and began to work faster and faster.

The pressure and release of his mouth on my cock was matching the pulsing of the Christmas lights filtering into the bedroom. Moaning, I pulled my knees up onto the bed on either side of his hips, leaned my torso back, with my hands gripping his knees; and, using the leverage of my thighs and knees, fucked his throat to an ejaculation.

He released my cock and kissed me along the lower belly line of my trimmed pubic hair after I had come, while I held position straddling his thighs. He handed me a condom packet, which I opened myself and then reached back and rolled onto his cock, which, after my ejaculation, he had slapped around on my buttocks, rubbed across my hole, and used the bulb to worry my hole open to him. I was the one to reach back and lube his shaft and the opening to my channel, as well.

Typical Tyler, I was doing most of the work. I even fucked myself on his shaft, in synch with the pulsing lights, holding the cock in place with a greased hand as I settled on and slid down it and doing the hard riding as he held my waist in his hands and gave me an enigmatic smile.

Just when his remoteness and arrogance were getting to me, though, the dam burst on his emotions. He reached up and pulled my face down and took my lips brutally with his into a deep kiss.

He twisted my body to the side and came with me, his knees sliding under my buttocks. Then, still wildly kissing my lips and my face and down to my nipples, he fucked me furiously, with much passionate noise registering need and pleasure from both of us. I certainly learned now that he could use salty profanity as well as anyone could.

The passion ended with nearly simultaneous fireworks from both of us.

He rose from me then and padded off to the bathroom, while I stretched out on the bed. I have no idea how long the uninhibited, honest part of the fuck had lasted, but, for now, it was enough. He had dropped the pretenses and façade—not for long, but long enough for both of us to know he would.

When he returned from the bathroom, he crawled under the covers of the other bed in the room without uttering a word.

I was disappointed, but it wasn't a disappointment that lasted for long. Twice more in the night, his body came down on mine in the twin bed, and he fucked me fully and passionately, holding me in his tight embrace, kissing me all over my body, muttering how hard and glorious my body was, sliding that long, hard cock in and out of me, coaxing out shared ejaculations. Showing each time that he wanted me, couldn't get enough of me, couldn't—in the dark and just between the two of us—voice enough approval of me and my openness to his need.

He became progressively more open and demonstrative with each fuck, until, at the release of the last coupling of the night, he was holding me close, rocking my body with his, and the faces of both of us were tear stained. He didn't leave me then, and we both went to sleep in a close embrace.

I left the apartment before dawn, although dawn came late in the winter in Washington and the moonlight on the fallen snow beyond the windows lit the Georgetown neighborhood up like it was day. Sometime in the night the pulsing red and blue lights from across the street had been turned off. But that was only in the real world. In my memory they were still going, still in synch with the rhythm of the fuck.

Tyler hadn't been in the bedroom when I woke up. I showered, dressed, and came out into the living room. He was sitting in the same chair as the previous evening, smoking an exotic-colored cigarette again, but this time fisting a coffee mug rather than a martini glass.

The only other difference was that he wasn't wearing trousers now, just the smoking jacket, with his now-flaccid cock exposed between the parted edges of robe, and he looked more human. His hair was tousled, his arm and hand movements weren't so studied, and his smile when he looked up at me was less judging, less severe than any I'd seen from him before.

"I'll go now," I said, half expecting to be offered breakfast, or a cup of coffee, or something—fearing that I'd receive criticism or a command to never mention this night of coupling again.

"Yes," he answered. No offer of coffee, but no brutal dismissal either. Would he claim that I had seduced him? Would this be all my fault?

"The parcel for Jenna is on the table in the vestibule," I said, turning in the doorway into the foyer. "Perhaps you should open it to make sure it's what she expected." I no longer cared if it was meant as a Christmas gift surprise for him. He'd already gotten his Christmas gift—from me.

"Take it with you," he answered.

"Take it with me?" I nonsensically repeated.

"Yes, and bring it back with you this evening . . . and then bring it back every evening until Jenna is back. I'm not sure when she'll return. I made sure your evening work calendar was cleared for a week. If you bring it back every evening, there will be a good reason why you have come to the apartment."

Typical Tyler. He assumed I would be at his beck and call for the week between Christmas and New Years. Like I didn't have other plans and people to see. But of course he was right; I'd clear my schedule for him.

"Yes, sir," I said, my spirits rising as I pulled on my overcoat, put the parcel under my arm, and prepared to face the snow. He wanted a delivery every night for as long as we could—the Christmas gift that kept on giving.

For some reason I felt like I had been the one delivered. Delivered from all those years of secret want. And I was beginning to see the possibility that Tyler might be delivered from himself—or was beginning to be—as well.

"Happy holidays to me," I muttered under my breath.