He gives me a lazy grin as I sit back beside him. “Mr. Rayne, it seems my appetite for you is never sated.”
I rub my finger in a drop of mustard on one of the plates and smear it on his jaw—and it’s a fuckfest, that night. Right until the early morning hours, when we fall asleep on the couch. My head’s in his lap, and his arm’s draped over my chest.
When I wake up, it’s nearly noon. The house is quiet, my throat is dry, and my whole body’s achy sore.
I find a note by my phone. “I’m in New York—only for the day. Call in sick and be here when your linner comes at 3.”10LukeI order him a four-course dinner from my favorite French place, The Little Prince. There’s a bank account I use which bears the name of an umbrella LLC. I order online, tip in advance, and ask the driver to set the boxes just so on the townhouse stoop.
Vance texts a picture of himself around 1 PM Pacific time. He’s still lying on the couch. He has a lazy smile, and his gray eyes are tilted at the corners.
Happy.
I made him feel that way. Not me—but my body did.
My head is fuzzy all day. Vance sends more text pictures, showing me that he enjoyed the food. As my plane dips back into the Bay area at 9:45 that night, he sends one from the mural atrium. It’s mostly his paint-smeared hand. I can see the floor behind it, though, and scaffolding.
Wait for me there.
I find him high up on the scaffolding, putting the first color splotches I’ve seen on the wall. It’s shades of green. When he hears my footsteps, his back and arms freeze. A moment later, he turns toward me and grins.
“Mr. Rayne. You’re making progress.”
“Trees.” That’s all he says before he bends to do something with his paints. I watch as he towels his hands, then moves down the scaffolding. He moves to me in a few long strides and hesitates—because he doesn’t know who’s around or if the cameras are rolling.
It’s my pleasure to pull him against me and lock my arms around him. He feels good—so warm and solid. His scratchy cheek brushes my forehead.
“Hey, you,” he says.
I kiss him deep and hard, then grip his hand and lead him into the big corridor beside his atrium.
“Fuck, you’re sexy in those nice clothes.”
I’m wearing a dress shirt, tie, and trousers. It’s rumpled from the day.
I pull open the stairway door. “No one’s as hot as you are in those ripped jeans.”
We kiss in the stairwell, and I think about that Sunday morning. About the stairs at that hotel in New York on one New Year’s the one time. I can barely let him go when we get to the third floor.
“I just need to step out for a second. Make sure we’re alone.” I kiss him again. “I’ll be right back.”
His eyes are so warm. He’s hard—I see through his jeans. I shut the stairwell door feeling like this isn’t quite real. No one’s in the pastor’s suite. I take his hand and lead him toward my office.
I can feel his questions, but he doesn’t speak them. When we get to the wall with all the artifacts—the wall outside my office—his strides shorten.
“This is it,” he murmurs.
I open my office door and put my hand against his lower back. Vance steps inside. For the longest second, as the wall of windows behind my desk shadows him, I can’t seem to draw a breath.
Vance is in my office.
My blood surges.
Vance is in my office, and I’ll take him on my desk.* * *I take him on the desk and in the port-a-room and in the Prius in his garage one night when I get home first and lie in wait there. I use him until I don’t know how he moves up on his scaffolding. I give him everything my body can—we’re often up all night—and I sleep like the dead on my plane and my office couch.
It’s a glut of lust and satiation. I’m hard all the time. I wear too-tight briefs to keep my hard-on tucked away, and when I can, I show him to supply closets and, once, a stairwell. When I take him in the men’s room right beside his atrium, I realize it’s so risky, it can only be a sort of self destruction. But I can’t stop. I can barely function.
He’s a stallion. I punish him all night, and he paints all day. He’s ready every time I arrive in the evening, often awake when I fall asleep.
One morning about three weeks after he arrived in San Francisco, he wakes me up at 4 so I can go home from his house, and I notice him rubbing at his shoulder as I slip my clothes on.