by Daryl Banner
“No special treatment, then.”
“I’m going back to work now,” he announces to the floor.
“You’re doing an objectively really great, unbiased, totally impartial job, by the way. Top marks.”
His eyes seethe when they meet mine. I’d like to think they’re seething with lust, but he’s a touch too pissed off to tell. The sight gives me more pleasure than I ought to admit.
I smile innocently, then add, “I’ll be sure to put a note in your monthly eval.”
To that, Trevor puts on a super serious, totally professional, impressively straight-lipped business face. “Goodbye, boss.”
“See you around, intern.”
And then he gives me the gift of his tight tush as he spins around and marches out the door. I tilt my head and watch, a crooked smile spilling across my face.
13
Trevor needs to let off some steam.
The rest of the day is a big horny haze.
I should jot that down in my journal.
Today: a big horny haze.
When I leave the office, all I want to do is go home and bury my face in a pile of pillows and a bowl of hot fudge-glazed cookie dough ice cream.
Instead, I’m roped against my will into Elijah’s plan of hanging out with some of the interns. “I’m tired,” I lie.
“You’re not wigglin’ out of this, bud.” Elijah hisses all of this into my ear as he walks right by my side like a bride down the damned aisle. He wears a weirdly smug smirk too, like he’s super proud to be my best friend suddenly and wants the other interns—none of whom are looking our way at all—to see that.
Plus, he gave me so much shit when I refused to name which “intern” I was getting busy with in the bathroom. I still haven’t even confirmed it was me, but Elijah knows better, and I can’t hide a damned thing from my face when he’s pressing me the way he does—aggressively and without relent.
He did insist that he won’t press me in front of the other interns, since he doesn’t know who it is and doesn’t want to embarrass me, but he expects me to cave one of these days.
If only he knew.
Hopefully he never does.
It turns out to be some nauseating hipster coffee hangout that the interns were so dying to go to. Color me a tart shade of yippy when we stroll through its doors. Triple espresso macchiato is just my favorite. And the ratio of guys wearing fake designer glasses they don’t need is ten to one. And the amount of man buns, suspenders, and skinny jeans is enough to put every thrift store from here to Canada out of business.
And they’re playing fucking Lana Del Rey.
“Really, though,” starts Elijah when we and the three other interns plop down at a booth. “Spill the deets. Did boss man make anyone feel two inches tall? I heard he’s really good at that.”
Not sure about two inches tall, but he made me six inches hard. “Not really, Elijah.”
He furrows his brow at me. “Don’t say my name like that. It’s like you’re annoyed that I wanna ask you questions. Like … Elijah,” he sings, mocking my tone. “Like—Not really, Eliiiijah. C’mon. I’m your bud. Throw me a bone.”
Mr. Gage threw me a bone, alright. He threw me a boner, led my hand straight to it in that bathroom stall, and he commanded me to make hand-love to it.
And it took everything in me not to just sink to my knees right there in that stall and wrap my lips around whatever he was packing.
“Coffee pop?” offers the redhead Jimmy, producing a lollipop from thin air. I suppress a grimace and shake my head no. He slaps it right into his mouth with a shrug.
His lips around the lollipop definitely don’t make me think of the “lollipop” I felt in Mr. Gage’s underwear. And when Jimmy starts to less-than-decently suck on that lollipop like he’s trying to make it come coffee bean babies down his throat, I don’t think of the sound of Mr. Gage’s cock spanking my tongue.
Oh, great. I’m thinking about spanking now.
“So?” prompts Elijah, pulling my attention back to him.
I sigh. “His methods are pretty straightforward. He’s …” I clear my throat. “He can be aggressive when it comes to … handling his clients.” I picture him slamming me against the bathroom wall. Aggressively. “He … acts fast.” Ben’s face darts at mine, an animal latching onto his prey, consuming me. “He acts … intelligently …”
I don’t have an image of Ben for that last one.
Because what he did was stupid. And what he said to me, even stupider. Really, how in twenty gay hells could he possibly believe that a guy like me planned some great seduction of the one and only Benjamin Gage? If I was that cunning, I would have ten CEOs wrapped around my fingers by now and a mansion in the Fijis.
At least, I think I might. If I was a master flirt, maybe. Which I’m not. I’m as flirty as a spatula.
And there’s nothing sexy about a spatula.
If Benjamin was smart, he would have apologized for all the weirdness, acknowledged how we both made a mistake in not knowing who the other one was Friday night, and then shook hands and agreed to be professional.
Instead, he chewed me up like salt water taffy and spat me into a bin of gay sugar. That’s all I am now. I’m sugarcoated in longing, frustration, and a desperate, mounting need to get off.
I hate you, Benjamin Gage.
Now everything is complicated, and I don’t know what to do. This was the dream opportunity that thousands of other students would have killed for, and my chance got ruined before it even started. The boss man himself, who I’d anticipated meeting and impressing for months, turns out to be nothing but a controlling man who wants to use me like a piece of meat.
That last sentence shouldn’t turn me on as much as it does.
I’m just his piece of meat.
My face flushes with my inner humiliation.
“Well, I think he’s going to need some help with this client,” chimes in the bearded, blond Brandon sitting next to Jimmy. “I stayed after a bit to poke Mr. Gage’s brilliant brain. Really, you have to wonder if a man like that was just born with his talent, or if he developed it meticulously over time and experience …”
“Oh, God,” groans Ashlee, the green-eyed intern with the curly dark hair and silky russet skin. “If your nose was any farther up the boss’s butt, you’d smell his last three ex-boyfriends.”
Jimmy spits out his coffee pop and Elijah spurts out his drink, guffawing so loudly that we draw the (annoyed) attention of two nearby tables, who I’m sure were busy discussing the intricacies of green tea and its political influence on western civilization.
Brandon narrows his eyes at Ashlee. “Go ahead, make your little jokes. You’re just jealous that I was first to get picked to sit in on a conference room meeting.”
“Taylor over here was picked, too. I don’t see him gloating,” she returns with a challenging lift of her eyebrows.
I lick my lips. “I-It’s Trevor.”
She eyes me, her green irises flashing. “Oh, I’m sorry. Shit. This whole time I thought your name was Taylor.” I smile and give her a shrug. “You and Elijah are good friends? He was telling me.”
“Yeah, childhood friends,” I confirm, looking back and forth between the pair of them. Elijah watches as she speaks, a weird little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Ashlee sucks in her bottom lip as her legs squeeze together, like they can’t decide whether to cross or not.
I’m pretty sure what I’m witnessing is a straight world mating ritual, but I leave it alone because I’m suddenly thinking about a strange mating ritual of my own: the one where Ben thought it was a good idea to plunge into a bathroom stall with me and make quick work of my mouth after accusing me of being a scheming ho, more or less. God, if he was anyone else in the world, I would have welcomed the opportunity to drop before him and pull that big cock of his free.
Side note: the bathroom stall was exceptionally clean. I totally could see my reflection on the shiny jade toilet seat.
/> “So why aren’t you gloating?” fires the bearded Brandon suddenly, his eyes squinting my way.
I’m probably committing public relations blasphemy here, but I give him a shrug and wrinkle my face. “It was just a note-taking job. Rebekah will probably rotate through our whole lot, one at a time. What’s the point in gloating?”
Brandon draws his wide lips to one side, thinking, then shrugs too. “I guess you have a point. But I wouldn’t play it off so much. It’s still a big deal. If you get onto Mr. Gage’s radar …”
How about into his high-rise apartment? Or his pants? “There’s far, far more important experience to pick up,” I interrupt him, unable to hear any more about Mr. Gage or his big … radar. “We learn enough just by clocking in and performing our duties.”
“You mean our busywork,” groans Jimmy, rubbing his temple.
“Dude, you can’t be so flippant,” Elijah spits at me, giving me a nudge. “Hands-on experience with the boss is freakin’ priceless.”
You can say that again.
Brandon points at me suddenly. “I see what you’re doing.”
I lift a startled eyebrow. “Hmm?”
“You’re playing it cool,” he decides with a nod. “You’re acting like none of it is a big deal. Trying to throw us off the scent. Trying to act like you don’t want it, like you’re above it all, like you’re too cool for school … but you’re not fooling me.” Brandon chortles. “I’ll tell you, if Brady had gotten chosen …”
“Oh, fuck me, we are not talking about that insufferably self-absorbed penile implant,” Jimmy exclaims.
“He’s hot,” mumbles Ashlee under her breath.
“And he knows it,” Brandon tacks on. “He probably thinks he can bat his eyes, strut his shit, and steal Mr. Gage’s attention that way. What a tool. And he’s straight, on top of it all.”
Elijah crosses his arms and shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t buy it. He might be a total douche, but I doubt he’d stoop so low as to cock tease a gay man.”
“Doubt all you want,” mumbles Brandon, “but that’s exactly what he’s doing. And he’s shameless about it. That dude will stoop to any level, I swear it.”
“Still doubting.” Elijah sips his drink.
Suddenly I picture the annoyingly cocky Brady as he popped the toner into the copier with ease, making me feel like the biggest fool on my first day. Sure, he was trying to help, but I’m also fairly certain his inner dialogue went something like, “Loser. Can’t even replace the toner. I bet he’s checking me out, too. Homo.”
Now I have to picture him flirting with the boss, doing the exact thing that Benjamin just accused me of doing. Gaining favor. Playing the seduction. Being … dirty.
Suddenly Brady’s all I’m thinking about, and there’s nothing good there at all. Except his hair. Maybe.
Brady just became every high school bully I used to deal with my whole childhood, every straight guy I secretly longed for who only returned my nerdy, loser attention with a sneer, a scoff, or a derogatory word. My craving for their negative attention got so pathetic, even the three-and-six-letter F words became a hot (yes, a hot) part of my nightly fantasy when I was alone jerking off to an imaginary jock bully. “Hey, fag,” he’d grunt, his hot breath on my face as he’d shove me against the wall of the locker room wearing his varsity letterman jacket, tight jeans, and messy teenage hair. “Saw you staring at me all day, homo.” Of course I’d deny it over and over in a pathetic half whimper, my heart racing from desire and excitement rather than fear, and then he’d pull off my clothes in an attempt to either further humiliate me or get me off. I was never sure which way the fantasy would go; they so often went a hundred different ways every night, but they always started with an unattainable hot guy and a bunch of teenage aggression.
And they ended with a sticky mess in a wad of tissues or the end of a tube sock. How romantic.
But the time for bully fantasies has passed. The hot, off-limits jocks of my childhood don’t own my brain or my dick anymore. I’ve been proudly free of their influence since I went to college and found myself. Now Brady thinks he can be one of those unattainable cock teases? He thinks he can manipulate the boss with his model boy looks and his stupidly perfect hair?
I feel anything but turned on by him. That asshole is going to spend the summer trying to seduce my boss, and there’s nothing I can do about it. My boss, my idol, my Ben.
Wait. My Ben?
Did I … Did I really just say that?
Just then, my phone buzzes with a new text, scaring me for a second. While the others explode into laughter at some joke Elijah shares that I obviously missed, I glance down at the screen.
It comes from a blocked number, but in reading the text, I need no hints as to who it’s from:
I believe you, Trevor.
We were just two men that night.
You had no ill intentions.
It was wrong and unfair of me to make such an assumption, and for that, I apologize.
This will be the last time I speak to you in such a personal manner.
We will keep things professional from here on out.
Thanks for your understanding.
14
Benjamin plays by the rules.
With my feet kicked up on the ottoman and Lance asleep on the couch by my side, I stare at the text I just sent.
Worry spears through me.
He wouldn’t be vindictive and run around tomorrow showing all the other interns my message, would he?
Stop being paranoid. Stop thinking so little of people.
But I work with the world’s worst for a living. The privileged princes and princesses of Beverly Hills. The filthy rich and entitled celebrities of the highest standard. The asswipes of humanity who shit diamonds and eat gold-flecked pigeon mousse for dessert.
I can’t help but sometimes suspect the worst in people. I’m paid to seek that worst part of them and minimize it, hide it, kill it, twist it into some safe lie to feed the public.
Essentially, the central tether of my whole existence is lying.
Maybe my parents were right to admonish me for my choice in a career. What am I giving the world, really? What value am I adding to a world already so full of pretention, falsehoods, and gimmicks? If people like me keep perpetuating the social media lie, it’s only a matter of time before the world’s lined from one end to the other with nothing but tweets, cat memes, and Ray-Ban ads.
In my endgame, there will be nothing real left in the world.
I stare down at the text.
Trevor was real.
And I just told him it’s over in a word or two—over before anything had a chance to even begin. That’s like stopping halfway through a hand job. Who’s the cock tease now?
I set my phone down on the couch next to me, forcing myself to feel satisfied with my decision. It’s the only way to go, if we want to really be adults about this. He is an adult, after all.
A young adult. Youngish.
Why is he so worried about being professional? I own the damned company. Fuck professionalism. I can schedule an orgy day and let everyone climb each other naked if I wanted to.
Well, maybe not. Unless I care to also add the lawsuits that’ll follow to my bar tab.
Am I seriously discussing office orgies with myself?
No, of course not. Because it’s not what I want. None of those other interns are what I want. Trevor is the only one I have my eye on. Ever since that moment in the nightclub and all of the tasty, perfect, nuanced moments that followed, Trevor has consumed my mind in every way.
What is it about him? What does he have that all the other hot young men Rebekah shoves at me don’t?
He’s innocent, yet smart. He looks up at me with big, curious eyes, but behind them is a fiery furnace of thought. He cares. He’s aware. He sees more than what’s on the surface—which is what I feel whenever he looks my way: he sees beneath my surface.
I can’t even shake him off when I mastur
bate, which is pretty much as pathetic as someone of my stature can get. No matter the fantasy I try to generate that doesn’t have him in it, there’s Trevor and his crystalline eyes, popping in somewhere.
His crystalline, stubborn eyes.
When I’m trying to picture some hot hunk bent over a desk awaiting my dick, he’ll look back at me with Trevor’s face.
Trevor’s possessed me.
Am I stuck on him because I didn’t quite have him? Did he hook me like a big hearty bass, then toss me back into the lake without a damned care? Or maybe the better analogy is that he’s keeping me trapped in his aquarium, and I’m the idiot swimming around it in endless laps, pouting my lips every time I pass that tiny castle with the bubbles wiggling out of it.
My world is so cold like that aquarium.
I need someone like Trevor to heat it right up.
“No, you don’t,” I state out loud, startling Lance out of his dream as he lifts his head, alarmed. “You don’t need him to heat anything up except a seat at your office where he’s firmly planted and working. Like a good worker. Completely professional.” I turn to my dog. “Am I right, or am I right?”
Lance swipes his tongue over his snout once, then drops his head back onto his paws and shuts his eyes.
I grin crookedly and put a hand on his head, giving the backs of his ears an affectionate scratching.
A tinny, glassy sound emits from my phone—a text message. Despite the jump of excitement in my chest, I play it cool as I take the phone into my palm and smoothly lift it to my face.
T
Thank you for the apology.
I understand and will cooperate by maintaining a professional manner in the office. See you tomorrow.
I read the message twenty times, my mind scrutinizing each and every word that Trevor took the time to choose, type, and then send my way.