In Pieces

by Alexa Land

  “Dinner and a movie, something nice and normal. Well, ok, I won’t actually be eating anything, so it won’t be that normal. But I want to do this right, Kieran.” I shifted the phone and perched on the edge of my bed. “It kind of freaked me out when you said you wanted to renegotiate our friends with benefits thing. Getting involved with anyone is a really frightening proposition. But I want this, and I’m willing to do what it takes to make it happen.”

  “So am I.”

  “Ok. So, I’ll see you at seven p.m. Um, could you pick me up? I don’t actually have a car.”

  “Sounds good. It’ll be our first date, you know.”

  “It will.”

  “Oh, and there’s something you should know, Christopher,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m kind of easy, I actually put out on the first date,” he said lightly. “See you soon, baby.” I had a huge smile on my face as we ended the call.

  We did just what I’d suggested for our first date. I took him to a cute little Italian place for a meal, and afterwards we went and saw the latest action blockbuster at the theater. It wasn’t until we got back to my place that the date veered away from the conventional.

  “Is it weird that my cock’s hard because you tied me up?” Kieran asked. I’d used strips of an old t-shirt to fashion makeshift bindings, and he was currently naked and spread-eagled on my bed, held securely to the metal bedframe.

  I shook my head. “Not weird at all.”

  “I had a girl I was dating do this to me once, just my hands. And I freaked out on her. I made her take the bindings off after like ten seconds, even though it had been my idea. I guess I didn’t really trust her. But with you, I feel incredibly secure.”

  I leaned down and kissed him, then cuddled against his chest. “I’m glad you do.”

  “I want us to slowly test my limits. I want to give myself to you completely, and I want to find out how deep my submissive side runs. Would you be willing to do that?”

  “Yes. But you’re right about the slow part, we shouldn’t rush it.”

  “No. Especially since we just started dating today.” He smiled at me cheerfully.

  I sat up and reached behind me, massaging his balls before sliding lower and stroking the soft skin beneath them. He practically purred, then asked, “Since you have me completely at your mercy, what are you going to do to me?”

  “This, for starters,” I said, rolling a condom on his hard cock and slicking him. I positioned him at my opening and sat all the way down on his thick shaft as he moaned with pleasure. I began riding him with languid, rolling movements, up and down.

  “I love this, with you on top. It makes me feel like I belong to you.”

  I smiled at that and said, “Do you want to add another element to the mix?”

  “You can do anything you want to me, Christopher.”

  I shivered with pleasure at that. After riding him for another minute, I pulled off of him. I grabbed a small suitcase from the bottom of the closet and put it beside him on the bed, then mounted his cock again, picking up right where I left off.

  He glanced at the suitcase and grinned. “We going on a trip?”

  “Oh yes,” I murmured, unzipping the case as I kept up the rhythm on his cock. When I flipped back the lid to reveal a big selection of sex toys, his breath caught.

  “Oh wow,” he whispered.

  I pulled out a medium-sized dildo and lubed it up, then reached behind me and spread some lube into his little hole before slowly working the toy into him. His expression was pure bliss, and he held my gaze as I began to fuck him with it, deep, long thrusts in and out. I matched it to my pace on his cock, and as I increased the force of the thrusts into him, I rode him harder. “This is amazing,” he whispered, his breath fast and shallow. “I’ve never felt anything like it.” It reminded me just how innocent he was, and yet how trusting and willing to follow me wherever I led.

  I took him just a little harder with the toy, bouncing on his cock with more force, and he threw his head back and moaned, reflexively thrusting up into me as I rode his cock and fucked his ass. After a few minutes he cried out, his entire body convulsing as he came violently, bucking up off the bed, pulling on his restraints. I rode out his orgasm, and when he was spent I carefully eased off his cock, holding the condom in place.

  I still hadn’t finished, which barely occurred to me. The hooker in me was used to not finding release. But Kieran begged, “Please baby, finish in my mouth. Fuck me.”

  “I don’t know if we should do that while you’re tied down. It could be too intense,” I told him as I gently brushed his damp hair off his forehead.

  “Please, Christopher. Use me. I need it so bad.” His voice was a rough whisper.

  I shook with desire and climbed up so I was straddling his face, and bent my hard cock downward, sliding it into his open mouth. I was careful with him, but gave him what he asked for, fucking his mouth. He was learning to control his gag reflex, relaxing his throat, figuring out how to position his tongue, tilting his head back a bit.

  “You’re doing great, Kieran,” I whispered encouragingly, pleasure arcing through me. Soon I was cumming down his throat, and he swallowed me eagerly. As my orgasm ebbed, I pulled out a few inches and he sucked my cock before I finally slid it from his lips.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  I removed his condom and eased the toy from him. Then I untied his hands and feet, before cleaning him up with a wash cloth and snuggling with him under the warm blanket. He was asleep in a matter of minutes, and I propped myself up and watched him for a while.

  It felt like Kieran was the one taking most of risks with this relationship, not me. He was putting so much trust in me, letting himself be vulnerable, letting me lead him through a whole world he’d never experienced. It made it easier somehow to let myself begin a relationship with him, my own insecurities put into perspective by his faith in me. I curled against him and draped an arm over his chest, and held him securely as he slept.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It seemed weird that Charlie knocked on the door to the apartment. I still considered it his place, even if he had officially moved into his new loft right before the wedding.

  It was late January. Kieran and I had been “officially” dating for a couple weeks. Despite my intentions to take it slow, we couldn’t get enough of each other, so we wound up spending almost every night together here in my apartment. It wasn’t all sex, though. We spent as much time talking and getting to know each other as was spent between the sheets.

  Charlie had just returned from his honeymoon, and as soon as I opened the door, he grabbed me in a huge hug and swung me around. “I missed you,” I exclaimed.

  “I missed you too, Christopher.”

  “Bullshit. You were too busy having fun to miss anyone,” I said with a grin as he set me on my feet. Charlie looked amazing, tan and healthy and radiating happiness. Married life was most definitely agreeing with him. “So, how was the South Pacific?”

  “Heavenly. Dante chartered a sailboat, it was incredibly romantic. And everyplace we went was so beautiful. It was just absolutely perfect.” He beamed at me as he took my hand and led me to the couch. “It was hard to come back to the cold and rain.” The last week in San Francisco had been flat-out gloomy.

  “You should have stayed another month.”

  “Oh, it was tempting, believe me. But Dante had to get back to the restaurant remodel, and of course I wanted to be back for your debut art show. Not to mention the fact that Dante and I have a couple classes starting next week that I signed us up for at Christmas.”

  “I’m not showing at the Tremont Gallery anymore.” The new artists show was actually tomorrow. I hadn’t heard a word from Ian Tremont since I’d gone to take back my paintings. Melanie Malloy had called to follow up with me, though. But she was clearly just trying to build up some kind of salacious sex scandal involving Ian and myself, and I refused to play into that.
We did discuss my work a bit, but apparently nothing had come of it, because that was the last I heard from her.

  Also, despite the article in the local paper, agents hadn’t exactly been beating down my door trying to sign me. Maybe that was because the article made it sound like Tremont was representing me. Or maybe no one was interested.

  I was back to being just another art student, and an unemployed one at that. I’d stopped turning tricks after my escort service got shut down, and had put in applications at shops and restaurants all over town in the last couple weeks, but hadn’t gotten any interviews. Why would I? I had absolutely no work history to include on the applications, since I wasn’t about to write: Hooker, age 15 to present. My chances of finding a legitimate job were pretty grim. Even still, I didn’t consider taking Jamie up on his job offer, because it felt too much like charity.

  “I already knew that about the show,” Charlie said with a big smile. He pulled a rolled up magazine out of his back pocket and said, “I found out as soon as our plane landed. Have you seen this?”

  “Seen what?”

  “Oh good, I get to be the first to show you.” Charlie unfurled the glossy current issue of Stylemaker Weekly. Staring back at me from the cover of the magazine was – me!

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed, as he handed me the magazine.

  It was a photo taken in front of the gallery. Mrs. Dombruso was peeking out the open door of the limo behind me, and Hunter was off to the side. I was holding my favorite painting, the one of myself as a young boy, which was clearly visible in the shot. I looked brave, defiant. The caption splashed across the photo was: The Art World’s Bold, Bright Future. “They retouched my dark circles,” I said with a little grin.

  Charlie burst out laughing. “That’s your response? You’re on the cover of a national magazine! I got off a plane at SFO and there was my best friend, at every newsstand! Do you get how freaking huge this is?”

  “Why on Earth would they put me on their cover? I’m nobody.”

  “They think you’re going to be the next big thing, obviously, and they want to be able to say they discovered you.”

  Just then, someone knocked on the door, and I let in an excited Kieran. He was waving a copy of the magazine, and yelled, “Christopher, guess what!” He held at least a dozen copies in the crook of his arm. When he spotted the magazine in my hand and my friend on the couch, he exclaimed, “Damn it, Charlie! I wanted to be the one to tell him!” He crossed the room and piled the magazines on the coffee table.

  Charlie got up and hugged Kieran as he said cheerfully, “You need to be quicker, Kier.”

  “I see that! When did you get back from your honeymoon?”

  “About an hour ago. I had Dante drop me off here, he needed to go and deal with some kind of mini crisis with the restaurant remodel.”

  “So, by the way Charlie, Kieran and I are dating now,” I said.

  “Did you meet at my wedding?”

  “We’d kind of met at Jamie’s Christmas party, but hooked up at your wedding. And have been hooking up ever since,” Kieran said with a slightly embarrassed smile.

  Charlie took the magazine from my hands and flipped a few pages, then said, “I actually already figured out you two were together, based on this.” The picture he turned to showed Kieran and me side by side. I was handing him a painting that I’d just removed from the gallery wall, and he was giving me the sweetest smile. “They have you listed as unidentified man,” Charlie said with a grin.

  “Sorry about that. The reporter never asked me who any of you were,” I said. “She didn’t seem all that interested in facts, to be honest with you.”

  “It’s really more of a photo essay than an article, though she does manage to hint at a juicy sex scandal,” Kieran said. “That photographer got some great shots, though. And there’s a whole sidebar on Hunter. He’ll be thrilled.”

  “Oh he will,” I said with a smile. I flipped through a few pages of the magazine. There was a huge photo of me dragging the banners into the gallery, covering two pages. The photographer had been quite talented. It was a great, dynamic shot, and I was surprised at how confident I looked. I turned another page and grinned at the photos of Nana in her exercise gear, liberating my paintings along with Kieran and Hunter.

  “I’m sorry I missed it,” Charlie said. “I would have gladly helped. I could have been unidentified man number two.”

  “It wasn’t planned. I was going to go by myself, and then it all just snowballed into this group outing.”

  “What happened between you and Ian, anyway?”

  I explained it to Charlie as concisely as I could, and he looked stunned. He said, “Dante’s going to be livid. I’m sure he had no idea Ian was such a snake, or he never would have introduced the two of you.”

  “Dante had no way of knowing this would happen,” I said. “Ian was perfectly charming when I first met him. He only got ugly after I turned him down.”

  “I’m still so pissed at him,” Kieran muttered. I gave him a hug and kiss to soothe him a bit, and he perched on the arm of the sofa behind me and rested his hand on my shoulder.

  “Watching you two together is kind of surreal. I was absolutely sure you were straight, Kier,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, I was kind of going for that inaccurate impression for a long time.”

  “How long have you known you were gay?”

  “Probably about as long as you have,” Kieran told him with a grin. To me he said, “Charlie and I have been friends since high school, we even played on the football team together. It’s kind of a shame that we both waited so long to come out, because it would have been really nice knowing I had an ally back then.”

  “You played football too?” I asked Kieran. When he nodded, I said, “Then how come you suck so bad at Madden?” I grinned innocently.

  Charlie burst out laughing, and Kieran said, “Because that’s not football! It’s a video game! It has no basis in reality. You want me to tackle someone in real life, I’ll tackle the hell out of ‘em. There’s no correlation between working a controller and the real thing!”

  My phone rang, and I was still chuckling as I answered it to an excited Mrs. Dombruso, asking me if I’d seen the magazine. I assured her I had, and she gushed, “I’m so proud of you, Christopher Robin. And that’s a great picture on the cover, you look so handsome.” Then she added, “I look pretty hot, too, in that photo. This is gonna give me a real advantage in meeting some stud muffins.”

  We spoke for a couple minutes, and after we disconnected, Charlie got up and flashed me a huge smile. “I’m thrilled for you, Christopher. Both because of the magazine, and because you and Kieran found each other.”

  “Thanks,” I murmured as Kieran and I exchanged grins.

  Charlie said, “I’m seriously tired, I need to go home and crash. I’ll call you tomorrow, ok?”

  I walked him to the door and kissed his cheek. “Ok. I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Me too. I’m gone a few weeks and miss all kinds of drama and excitement!” Then he called, “Bye, Kier. You two take care of each other, you hear?”

  “Count on it. Good to see you, Charlie,” Kieran said.

  Once he left, I gathered Kieran in my arms. “I didn’t realize you and Charlie were so close. That makes me happy.”

  “We were friends for a long time, but when he and my cousin broke up, things got a little awkward. He distanced himself from Jamie’s family, me included. It wasn’t until I saw him at the Christmas party that we really reconnected, and he ended up inviting me and Jamie’s sisters to his wedding.”

  “Good thing, too. Otherwise, we never would have found each other.” I snuggled against his chest.

  “Sure we would, one way or another. I had been trying to get up the courage to ask Jamie about the beautiful, curly-haired boy at his party. But of course I wasn’t out yet at that point, so I didn’t really know how to approach the subject.”

  I kissed him deeply, then grinned and
asked, “Do you want to move this into the bedroom?”

  “God I want to, but I can’t.” He tilted my chin up and kissed me again. “I actually have to be at work soon. I just stopped by to surprise you with the magazine. Or, you know, fail to surprise you, thanks to Charlie.”

  Once he left, I pulled my shoes and hoodie on, grabbed my backpack, and boarded a bus bound for the Tenderloin. It felt like a different world when I stepped off the bus – a world that, until quite recently, I’d inhabited. Litter and graffiti marred the landscape, homeless people sharing the sidewalk with hookers and dealers and everyday folk passing through on their way to someplace better than this.

  I glanced at the rent boys as I made my way down the street. I should be among them, but as I’d said, I hadn’t worked since the escort service went under two weeks ago. Partly, it was because of Kieran. Prostitution in general and working the street in particular was a huge point of contention with him, and I obviously understood why.

  The other part of it was that I just couldn’t quite make myself go back to street hustling. I was scared to return to that life, the emotional scars of my assault still so fresh, even after all this time.

  So, I’d more or less retired from prostitution, but I didn’t feel any different. Maybe it was something that never really let you go…maybe it lived under your skin forever.

  Besides, part of me really didn’t believe it was over. I kept thinking something would happen, my life would somehow go askew as it had so many times before, and I’d be forced to sell myself again. If things got bad enough, if I got desperate enough, it wouldn’t matter that I was afraid. I’d end up out here regardless of that.

  Until that did or didn’t happen though, I really didn’t know what I was going to do for income. I’d already accepted the fact that I would have to take a leave of absence from school until I saved up enough to pay tuition. Maybe I’d only have to take a couple quarters off if I managed to find a full-time job soon and was able to save aggressively. I probably wouldn’t be able to afford more than one quarter a year, so the remainder of my undergraduate studies could end up spread over several years. But I’d made my peace with that. I would still get it done, no matter how long it took.