Figuratively, his bedposts were notched with slightly more than a dozen disinterested young men who had dared to reject him at first. But he always got them in the end, one way or another.
For some time, he was oddly unaware of the young man sitting alone at the far end of the bar. The boy was at a prime age, mid-twenties, thirty at the most. Dark, intelligent eyes surveyed the crowd while the stranger idly sipped his drink, alternately amused or bored by the antics of the bar’s more effusively drunken customers. A stylishly unruly mop of hair hung low on his forehead, neither brunette nor blond but some indiscriminate shade in between. Even when a hank of it fell across his eyes that surely obscured his vision, he never raised a hand to brush it back.
His physique—what Joel could see of it—was certainly worthy of interest. Taut chest muscles strained against his shirt and parted the open collar enough to display more than a glimpse of tawny smooth skin, hinting that the release of each successive button would expose a fit, athletic body. Trapped behind the bar, Joel had trouble getting a full-length view. But when the youth vacated his stool and headed toward the rest rooms, Joel noted that he had a bubble butt, so perfectly formed that the dimples in the muscles of his ass cheeks were discernable through the denim.
As well-built and as good looking as the customer was, Joel was nevertheless baffled by the power of the attraction he felt. In a city where model handsome guys were a dime a dozen, this young man was far from extraordinary.
What he was, though, was irresistible. He oozed a raw and nebulous sensuality, more penetrating than the most intoxicating pheromones. Joel had to fight the urge to reach inside his own pants and rearrange himself more comfortably. Distracted, he even screwed up an order, so rapt was he in the fantasy of bending the guy over the bar and forcibly taking him in full view of the other bartenders and the rest of the crowd.
His longing for the stranger grew painful, as if he’d had blue balls for days. Normally, by this time, Joel would have expected to have seen some interest on a customer’s part, mild flirting or an attempt to engage him in conversation at least. But the newcomer had barely acknowledged Joel’s existence. He seemed disinclined to do anything other than to watch the crowd.
To get things rolling, Joel pushed a drink across the bar, accompanied by a seductive wink and a pointed, “It’s on me.” The customer smiled, raised the glass in a small salute of gratitude and replied with a simple, “Thanks.” Two drinks later, Joel’s frustration was hovering on the edge, about to topple over and ignite. While the youth’s responses had been polite and congenial, they’d been cursory; there was still no evidence whatsoever of reciprocal interest.
Joel had rarely been so openly or completely taken for granted. Clearly, the youth was aware of his presence; he simply appeared not to care unless he needed Joel to serve another drink. Joel’s rage began to simmer.
With unaccustomed generosity, he decided to give the lad a second chance. It would be a shame to waste the sexual opportunity simply because he’d failed to realize that the young man’s rebuff was rooted in nothing more than shyness.
Joel waited for several hours, watching the boy watch the crowd with a slightly superior air that would have seemed smug had it not been clear that he was genuinely amused by the goings-on as the evening progressed and some of the men had one too many. Finally, just after midnight, there was a lull and Joel seized the opportunity it offered.
“So, how’s your night going?” He extended his hand across the bar. “I’m Joel.”
“Adam.”
The boy’s smile touched his features at the exact instant their fingers made contact. Joel gasped at the transformation. Adam was still good looking but now, Joel ached with the deep, unrequited yearning of a freshman’s desire for the varsity quarterback. It was lust, pure and simple, possibly the most powerful he’d ever felt.
He was abundantly conscious of their palms touching; the commonplace gesture of shaking hands had somehow become so much more. A tingle from Adam’s hand ran up Joel’s forearm and split into two separate streams of arousal; one infused his chest with lustful heat while the other made a beeline for his swollen dick and aching balls.
“I never saw you here before.” The comment was contrived to be casual, but it held a deeper meaning.
Clearly, Adam understood what Joel meant. Nevertheless, his attention remained focused on the crowd with a sense of anticipation, as if he was waiting for someone specific to make an appearance. A long time passed before Adam seemed to register that the bartender was trying to strike up a full-fledged conversation.
A little shame-faced, he grinned. “I have a confession to make.”
“Yes?” Joel could not take his eyes off the way Adam’s lips moved when he spoke. He had to physically brace himself to keep from leaning across the bar and kissing them.
“Tonight, I’m breaking almost three months of sobriety.”
“AA?”
For an instant, Adam’s brow furrowed with confusion. Then, his features evened out and he smiled. “Not exactly,” he replied. “I’m fighting the urges but…” He shrugged.
With four drinks in him already, Joel concluded that it wouldn’t be long before the alcohol triumphed over whatever restraint Adam could muster.
“It’s not easy.”
Joel nodded sympathetically. “It can be... hard.” The innuendo was obvious but, when Adam failed to notice it, Joel pressed his point. “And if it is... hard, I’d love to help you with that. I’d like to see… more of you.”
Adam looked startled for a moment, surprised. His attention shifted away from the crowd and settled on Joel. The wall that Joel had sensed between them came down, and suddenly it seemed that Adam was seeing him anew as an actual person, not just as a faceless bartender. Adam’s gaze was penetrating, measuring. Under such scrutiny, Joel involuntarily flexed his biceps and chest. He had no idea why this young man attracted him so but if preening like the proverbial peacock was what it took to get him into bed, Joel was more than willing.
The silent inspection continued. Joel felt an unfamiliar but no less horrid sense of inadequacy and impending disappointment, a feeling that was confirmed when Adam finally said, “I’m sorry but I don’t think so.”
Joel maintained his devilish grin, but his eyes grew cold and hard and his rage threatened to blossom into full flower.
“I’m sorry?” He pretended to misunderstand.
Adam leaned over the bar and in a soft and strangely intimate tone, he said, “I don’t mean to be ungrateful for the drinks but... do those lines really work?”
“Huh?” Joel was flabbergasted. Never before had a prospective pick-up confronted him so directly.
“Don’t get me wrong.” Adam wasn’t being deliberately cruel. He projected the ambiance of a grade school teacher who was trying to avoid hurt feelings by assuring a tragically untalented child that his finger-painting was indeed the best in the class. “You’re very hot. I mean that. I really do. I’ve rarely seen a better body and your face…” He held up both hands as if in surrender. “You’re definitely Top Ten. Best in Show. Drop Dead Gorgeous. But here’s the thing…”
Transfixed by Adam’s every word, Joel drew closer as if it would somehow help him understand how his advances could possibly be rebuffed.
“I’m not interested.”
Joel blinked, recognizing a tone of finality. He instinctively knew that no amount of wheedling, manipulation, seduction, coercion or plying Adam with drinks would change his mind.
The burn, when it came, was searing as it had never been before. It was as red hot as the instruments that would shortly cause Adam to regret his hasty and unfeeling rejection.
“Don’t take it the wrong way. It’s not you,” he said, inadvertently voicing Joel’s own frequently uttered and manifestly insincere excuse. “It’s me.” Then, Adam added brightly and with what appeared to be genuine hope, “But maybe we could be friends?”
Seething, Joel didn’t trust himself to speak;
he merely nodded.
“Most excellent!” Adam enthused. “Just because I think it would be a mistake to fuck you…” He blushed scarlet when he realized what he’d said. “I didn’t mean that to come out as crass or brutal as it sounded.”
“No problem.” Joel forced a smile. Though the rejection might sting, it would only be for a little while. Joel was perfectly willing to concede if, in the end, he got what he wanted.
“What I mean is.... I think we really could be friends.”
“Of course.” Joel kept his tone noncommittal.
“I’m serious,” Adam replied, showing a little pique now that Joel was the one who was acting distant. “I get the strangest feeling there’s a lot about you I’d like, just not in that way. I don’t want to get all touchy-feely and New Age about it, but don’t you sense we might even be kindred spirits? At least on some level?”
Kindred spirits.
The phrase took Joel aback and he examined it for hidden meaning. Was there a subtext to the words? Was Adam hinting at something darker lurking unrevealed below the surface? Joel’s self protective instincts shifted into high alert in case there was something he’d overlooked. Was it possible that Adam had heard rumors about him? Joel was always very careful about his conquests but, as a bartender with much of his time on public display, it wasn’t uncommon for him to be the target for the most vicious gossip and innuendo, though generally, it was because he was the one who’d rebuffed a customer’s advance.
In the end, he could find no signs that Adam was anything other than he appeared to be: a moderately good looking fellow with a somewhat bland personality. He was passably charming, maybe a little awkward and perhaps not particularly bright. In short, he was fairly normal except for the inexplicable way Joel was drawn to him sexually.
Chalking it up to that nebulous phenomenon he knew of as “chemistry”, Joel shrugged off his lingering doubts and his anger began to fester. Some not insignificant part of his bruised ego began plotting its plots and planning its plans.
“D’you know?” Joel feigned astonishment. “I felt the same way! The minute you sat down, I thought I sensed this…” He moved his hands back and forth in the air between them. “Connection.”
“Me too!”
Every shred of aloofness had vanished. No longer was Adam surveying the other bar patrons with that detached and superior interest. He seemed to have abandoned waiting for whoever-it-was to show up. Now that Adam’s entire focus was on him, Joel felt tingles of anticipation.
“Are you doing anything after the bar closes?” Joel asked.
“That’s kind of late, isn’t it? Unless we were planning... which we’re not, right?”
“I meant for a quick bite of something. Why?” Joel batted his eyelashes outrageously. “Did you think I was going to try to seduce you?” Playfully, he made another show of flexing his chest, his pectoral muscles strained the fabric of his t-shirt. “No worries. I’m not exactly desperate.”
Adam laughed with delight and applauded with good natured mockery.
“Or are you meeting someone? From the way you kept looking out there before, I thought…”
“No, no,” Adam hastened to reassure him. He added, not without some embarrassment: “It’s the sobriety thing. It might be embarrassing if anyone knew I was here.”
How convenient! Joel clamped down on the predatory smile before it touched his lips.
“Coffee or a sandwich sounds great,” Adam continued, eagerly. It dawned on Joel that, in spite of his good looks, Adam might not have very many friends. He’d leaped at Joel’s suggestion as if he were starved for company.
“When do you get off?”
Joel repressed a smirk at the unconscious innuendo.
“Closing out the register takes twenty minutes. I could meet you in the alley behind the bar at, say, 2:45?” By then, any stragglers should have stumbled off elsewhere. “One thing though…”
“Yeah?”
Joel nodded toward a gaggle of overbuilt thirty-somethings with tattoos overflowing their skin-tight t-shirts and drifting across their partly exposed pectorals and onto their throats before flowing down their arms. The ink provided an incongruous contrast to their pretty- boy mannerisms and model handsome faces.
“See those guys? The one in the red muscle tee and the shorter one, the blond wearing the baseball cap?” Joel did his best to look sheepish and slightly uneasy. “I maybe wasn’t too tactful when I turned down their friend earlier tonight.”
“Who’s that?”
Again, Joel inclined his chin. “The thin guy holding the beer has a thing for me and… well… he’s kind of pushy. Tonight…” He sighed as if mildly ashamed of himself. “I finally told him off. His friends weren’t happy about it. They think I’ve been leading him on.”
“Were you?” Adam seemed to legitimately want to know.
Joel did his best to look shocked at the suggestion and shook his head. “But the thing is, if any of his pals see me leaving with someone else... they might take it personally and... well, just look at them!”
“Say no more,” Adam said. From his shudder, he’d found the quintet of bodybuilders as intimidating as Joel had hoped. “It’s between us. I’d rather have coffee than spend the night at the ER anyway.” He chuckled.
You’ll wish for an ER once I get started on you, Joel thought, and he tried not to leer.
Until Last Call, he kept a discreet but steady stream of free drinks flowing in Adam’s direction. From time to time, when things slowed down, he paused to share a clever quip or flashed him a special smile while he was waiting on someone else.
He beat his prey to the 24-hour café by a healthy margin and parked at the far end of the lot under the dimmest streetlights. He struck quickly, not even giving his target time to get out of the car. The hypodermic went in smoothly and, before Adam could so much as gasp at the sting, he was unconscious. When he awoke, the lingering effects would be mild: a slight dizziness and heightened nerve sensitivity. The latter condition suited Joel just fine.
Once back at his apartment, with the ease of practice, Joel cut away Adam’s clothing. He secured the shackles around the young man’s wrists and ankles and hauled him into position. Held tightly spread-eagled by chains attached to tall, sturdy bedposts, Adam’s body was on full display and gave Joel easy access to all of his most tender and most vulnerable parts. Joel was so powerfully attracted by the sight of such beautiful helplessness, it was an effort to refrain from masturbating even before he made the first slice.
Adam’s ass was indeed everything he had hoped and more: two perfectly rounded globes covered with the finest down, begging to be probed. The boy’s chest was beautifully sculpted, two hard slabs of muscle, mostly smooth but for the tiniest patch of hair in the center of his pectorals and a thin ring of short silky strands around each plump raisin of a nipple. A slim treasure trail led down his stomach, the ridges cut like the plates of a turtle shell, until it reached his groin. Though his penis dangled flaccid, Joel suspected that when engorged, it was a respectable girth and length. His genitals were large and full, covered with a dark fuzz of hair.
A guttural groan came from deep within Adam’s chest when Joel slapped him fully awake. His eyelids fluttered open and, to Joel’s surprise, his gaze was clear and alert, not at all milky or confused from the lingering vestiges of the drugs. So much the better.
Joel allowed his captive to gradually register his predicament. Adam’s eyes darted around the large studio, taking in the thickly draped windows and the sound proof tiles that lined the walls and ceiling. He mumbled something into the gag, perhaps a question, perhaps a protest, but it was unintelligible. It was far easier for Joel to interpret the widening of the young man’s eyes when he spied the merrily boiling kettle, the screwdrivers and metal skewers heating in the flame of the camping stove, and the power drill on its charger.
“And now, Mister Bond,” Joel said with a preposterously phony accent, “I expect you to die.”
Joel giggled at his own cleverness. But from Adam’s look of confusion, he saw his joke had fallen flat. It was just one more thing about Adam that frustrated the hell out of him.
“You know, if you weren’t such a stuck-up prick, we could have had a lot of fun together. But now,” he shrugged and then giggled again, “at least I’ll be having fun.”
Adam tugged at the heavy leather cuffs; chains rattled against the wooden posts. There was a flash of panic when the youth realized how vulnerable his nudity made him and how thoroughly he was restrained. Or maybe it was because the meaning of the plastic sheeting on the floor beneath his feet became clear. The captive struggled and strained, writhing in his bonds and putting on a nice show long before Joel ever touched him.
When he realized his gyrations were futile he slumped, his chest heaving and his body already damp with fear sweat. Joel tugged his bowed head by the hair to better examine Adam’s face, expecting silent and desperate pleas for pity. He was surprised, but not entirely disappointed, to find grim defiance instead. Oh, this was going to be good!
First, Joel fucked him. It was rape pure and simple, perfunctory and intended only to highlight his victim’s powerlessness. Once he’d taken the edge off with his first climax, Joel decided to begin the evening’s main event with a light warm up. Adam shook his head violently when Joel wheeled the utility cart displaying the various whips into view. Joel grinned, knowing that Adam’s first glimpse of the various modifications and additions to the leather flails must have terrified him as he cringed in anticipation of how they’d feel.
Joel started simply with a plain leather whip. Each time the lash cracked, the impact made Adam’s entire body jerk. Drops of sweat flew from his brow and spattered onto the plastic sheet. Joel gave Adam no respite until the skin of his back and shoulders was scarlet and stretched tightly over incipient bruises. The ruptured capillaries should make the surface of Adam’s skin exquisitely tender. Lightly, Joel ran his fingertips across the inflamed flesh to test the sensitivity; even a gentle touch made Adam writhe.
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