A Life of Yes Ch. 07-08

Cael was almost shy in addressing me when he sought me out.

"I thought that was you at the bar last night," he said. "Do you remember me? A couple of years ago. I'm Cael. We met at Rita's on the Rocks."

"We more than met at Rita's," I answered, giving him a smile. "My name is Lee. We were in Kibris Delight together."

"Yes, you do remember then. I don't think I could ever forget you."

"Same here. And your red American car."

"I would hope you'd remember more--"

"Yes, certainly. You were very good. It was a good way to end that movie," I said. He touched me on the arm with a hand, tentatively, like maybe I'd jerk away. But I didn't.

"You still look very good--very desirable after two years," he said in a low voice. "But was that Erol Eragon I saw you with last night?"

"Yes. He had a taxi at the airport yesterday. He drove me here. I'm staying at the Salamis Bay."

"So, you didn't know him before? When you were here for the movie?"

"No."

"But you are... with him now? He is very rough, you know."

"Yes, I now know he is very rough. But, no, I'm not with him. He just drove me here from the airport and showed me around. He left me here, high and dry. I'll have to find my own way to Lefkosa or Girne, I guess."

"I have my car here. I still have the red Fairlane. I'm going back to Girne tomorrow. I could take you there, if you like."

"That would be very nice of you," I said. "I'd be very grateful."

"How grateful?" he asked. "You were very good. I thought about you for some time after we'd filmed that scene in the movie."

I had been leaning against the low altar table in the runs of the basilica. Practically no adjustment was required for me to go down on my back on the altar, for Cael to pull my T-shirt over my head and pull my shorts and briefs off my legs, and to come down between my spread thighs, to take my mouth with his for a deep, sweet kiss, and to enter me and slowly and sensually fuck me, rising and falling on my body, the two of us offering up a sacrifice to the gods of Salamis.

Cael was more lover than just a man who screwed me. He took me in waves and waves of gentle, rolling pleasure as I melded with him and rocked my pelvis against his, going with the slow pace of his cock working my channel.

It was a very nice fuck, but it wasn't the fuck I'd come to Cyprus to get. I needed to be dominated, punished. This was sensuous sex with a Turkish hunk, but it wasn't fully satisfying. I needed more of someone like Erol.

I hope, though, that it was satisfying the gods of Salamis.

* * * *

Cael drove me to Girne, the ancient harbor castle town on the island's northern coast, and I checked into the Dome Hotel there where I'd walked the catwalk in a fashion show two years earlier. Cael had to go on to work a few days at Rita's, but he said he wanted to see me again--I let him fuck me in the Dome Hotel room again when he brought me to Girne--and he said he wanted me to see the vineyard his father owned on the slopes below St. Hillarion Castle, so we made arrangements for him to come for me at the hotel two days later.

After Cael left I went to the hotel pool on the edge of the rocks by the Mediterranean and there I encountered Altan Tilki.

"So, that was you at Sulayman's last evening, wasn't it?" Tilki said. "I thought it might be. Do you know that Nigel is nearly sick with worry where you have gone? He's called me a couple of times. You need to call him."

"Yes, I suppose I do," I said, without a great deal of enthusiasm.

"You aren't leaving him?" he asked. "Because if you are and you've come here to live, I can use you." He noticed that I had reacted to the word "use." "Is that it, Lee? Nigel doesn't use you like you want to be used. As I remember you took it rough, that you wanted to act the innocent but be ravished. It was pure gold for the movies."

"As I remember, you gave it rough," I said.

"So, are you happy to see me here?" he asked. He was giving me a piercing look. I couldn't hold his gaze and looked out into the sea.

"Yes, I'm happy to see you here," I murmured. "And, yes, I came here to be used roughly."

He fucked me for two hours in his hotel room. He tied me to the bed and he fucked me cruelly as he had done two years previously in Istanbul. He beat me with a leather belt and then fucked me hard. When he was done I'd been fucked, and he knew that I had been satisfied.

"Meeting you here has been fortuitous," he said after the third fucking. "I have a business meeting with some men tomorrow. I keep a yacht here in the harbor, and I'm taking some men out for a cruise off the coast, where our meeting can't be monitored. Tari, the videographer, will be helping me. You remember Tari, don't you? He was the cameraman for that movie you were in for me."

"Yes, I remember Tari," I answered.

"And as I remember you'd lay under any man who wanted to fuck you." When I didn't respond to that, answering that by not demurring or disagreeing with him, he continued. "I wanted to take some talent out with us for the men to enjoy--a young man--a young man who can take it. I haven't booked anyone yet. There's good money in it. Would you like to go on a cruise tomorrow with me?"

I went on the cruise. I was kept in the stateroom below the main deck. The cabin was equipped for fun and games, and I was on my back, naked, with my arms pulled over my head, my wrists bound to the headboard, and my legs spread and raised, my ankles bound to chains hanging from the ceiling over the bed. As we cruised, the men Tilki was entertaining visited the stateroom one after the other, and each moved their knees between my spread thighs and fucked me. It was a thrill for them to have the image of fucking a bound captive. That was a thrill for me too.

Some of them were cruel; one of them fisted me, trussed up in my helplessness, and the wantonness in me cried out my want and my passion for how completely he was using me. I sucked the cocks of two-thirds of them. All of them used me as a release. All of them released inside me. The man who had fisted me was the only one who was able to reach me in my core when he exchanged the fist for his cock. He was the only one who I set my pelvis in motion in coordination with his thrusts, with me calling out, "Evet, Evet!--Yes. Yes! Derin--Deeper! Make me feel it!" My cries had brought some of the other men down to watch us through the hatch into the cabin and lick their lips and pull on the shafts.

He made me feel it, deep in my core. He was old and ugly and grizzled, but like that old man at the Tree of Idleness in the Bellapais square two years earlier, he made me feel it. At the height of the fuck he just held there, laughing, while I vigorously and wantonly fucked myself on his cock, seeking and receiving a glorious release.

Afterward, in the lounge of the Dome, while Tilki, Tari, and I were having drinks and Tilki was paying me for the day outing, he said, "Did you enjoy that, Lee?"

"Yes," I answered truthfully.

"If you aren't going to go back to Nigel, you can come with me," he said. "I will keep you busy and well paid."

"It's something to think about," I answered.

"And perhaps to resolve in a few days?" he said. "I go back to Istanbul in a week's time. I would like you to cancel your hotel reservations here and stay with me. I have a very nice suite here."

"Let me think about your proposition," I answered. "And I think it might be best if I keep my room." I was looking at Tari, and he picked up on my signal. Tari knocked on my door at midnight, I let him in, and he fucked me until nearly dawn. Again, like Cael, it was very nice and loving, but there was no fire and cruelty in it and my core didn't open to him and draw him inside. As he fucked me, my thoughts went to that grizzled old man on the yacht--to his fist and then his thick cock just holding steady as I fucked myself on it.

After that first reference to Nigel being distraught and wanting me to call him if Tilki ran across me, the Turkish businessman with the cruel techniques that I melted to didn't mention Nigel again. His loyalty and regard for a colleague went only so far.

* * * *

Two mornings later Cael picked me up at the hotel and drove me up into the Kyrenia range in his vintage red Ford Fairlane convertible. I was surprised that where he was taking me was in the same area he had driven me two years previously for a picnic and a fuck, with Tari hiding in the bushes and filming us fucking on a blanket in an orchard.

"Yes, this is my father's orchard," Cael confirmed when we arrived there. "This is where I brought you the last time. I knew it would be private here."

Beyond the orchard was a vineyard. I had come prepared for a romantic interlude with Cael, halfway thinking of trying to break my need for rough sex and working on having a relationship with a handsome romantic Turk like Cael. What I got was a dose of reality, though. When we walked into the vineyard, an older man was waiting for us. He was solidly built, muscular, and gray-haired hirsute. His age was indeterminable, but it was clear he was still a vigorous, strong man. He was wearing only shorts.

"This is my father, Sami," Cael said. "He owns and works this vineyard and has done so since the family came over from the mainland after the liberation of northern Cyprus."

"You father," I said, sure that he would get that, since his father had gotten him, his father lay with women.

Cael laughed. "It's all good with Turkish men," he said. "A hole is a hole is a hole and all that's needed is an opportunity."

The man was smiling at me, but I knew a lustful smile when I saw one. I was already beginning to understand what this outing was about.

"He has watched the movie we made over and over again and when I told him you were back on the island, he said he wanted to meet you. He wants to lay you. You take cock so easily that I was sure you would let him cover you. He's very good; he has a big cock. He will pay for it."

"And that's why you brought me up here?" I asked.

"Yes," Cael answered, no sign of embarrassment in his voice, sure that I was an easy lay for money for anyone who wanted to cover me. I hadn't given him any reason to think otherwise. I didn't prove him wrong this time.

"Does he want me in the house or outside," I asked, taking a good look at him. So far my luck had been good in Turkish Cyprus with old, grizzled, ugly men. My luck was good now too.

Sami fucked me between two rows of grape vines in a doggy position, dominating me cruelly, mounted high on my ass while I was on my hands and knees. He was an expert at cocking. And he was cruel. I opened right up for him and he spent nearly a half hour deep inside the core of me, conquering me, ravishing me, ripping all dignity out of me, making me beg for more of the cock, deeper, while he buried fingers in the hair on my head and arched me back painfully, alternating with slapping my buttocks and flanks hard and digging his dirty fingernails into my pecs. He was riding me like I was a race horse. I liked to think of myself as a thoroughbred, but I gave in to him too easily and gave him too much to justify that.

Cael crouched at the end of the row, watching me being fucked totally and stroking his cock.

We said little as he drove me back to the Dome Hotel in the Girne harbor. There wasn't much to be said. I was just a piece of ass to him, a prostitute. That was fine. I hadn't exhibited as anything else to him. I only cared that he thought I was good at being a prostitute. His father had done me well. I had taken the pitiful amount of money he had given me afterward. I didn't need it, but his pride had determined that he needed to offer it. But any relationship with Cael that I had been tentatively contemplating was out of the question now. If I had to give up rough sex, I wanted more in the way of companionship and regard than Cael obviously was looking forward to.

On a whim, when I got back to the hotel, I called Nigel in London. He picked up immediately.

"Where are you? Where have you gone, Lee?" he asked. "I am lost without you." It was clear from his plaintive tone that he was being genuine.

"I'm on a vacation, Nigel," I said. "I had some thinking to do."

"So did I--do some thinking," he said. "And I have been thinking. I realize how much you mean to me. I need you to come back to London, Lee. I'd like you to move in with me. I want us to be a couple."

"I don't know if I'd want to do movies anymore," I said, holding my breath.

"There's no reason you should if you don't want to," Nigel responded. "There's no reason you should do anything you don't want to do. Just come home to me. Just say yes to coming home to me."

With that the tumblers fell into place. Fully satisfying sex was one thing, but a real relationship was so much more. That must be the life I'd been looking for--not the life I'd come to Cyprus to find. Before Altan Tilki had returned to Istanbul, I was already on a plane back to London. I had said "yes" to Nigel before I disconnected the phone.

Chapter Eight: Eight Years Later, Reset

Whoever thought up the idea of giving thirtieth-birthday parties should be shot. This is especially so in giving them for people whose livelihood depends on their youthful looks. I had been agonizing over reaching this age for over a year, which was sheer agony for one who was a men's wear fashion model in London. My partner--my bed partner--the fashion designer, Nigel Standish, wasn't helping a bit. His new show that he had been working feverishly on for four months and would be launching in two weeks didn't help at all. It was fashions for "the very young," he had told me. "You'll understand why you won't be on the runway this time, Lee," he said, "although of course I'll need you backstage to help keep order," he'd added.

Yes, of course I understand why he wasn't putting me on the runaway with fashions for "the very young." What I wondered was whether he had designed the show so that it wouldn't be appropriate for me to walk the runway. And I more than understood the looks he gave the very young models he was using for the show. I had been very young myself, a performance art school student in New York ten years earlier, looking into modeling, when Nigel Standish had swept into town, stolen my virginity, put me in porn films, and, eventually, brought me back to London to work and live with him.

I wondered if he was doing this on purpose--this fashion show that took me off the runway and put young men up there who Nigel salivated over. I wondered whether he was not so subtly telling me it was over as I hit thirty. If not, his timing on a show theme was really shitty.

We'd had an understanding that, although we lived and slept together, neither of us was obligated to be monogamous. I hadn't been for the two years I was in porn films, arranged by Nigel. I rather suspect Nigel never was, although it wasn't something we discussed. I hadn't been too active since I'd come back to live with him.

My birthday party at the newly open, trendy London restaurant, The Ivy, was as jolly and fake as any event in the London entertainment industry was. Everyone was kissy face and "You look marvelous, Darling," when the affection of the kisses didn't go to the eyes and everyone most decidedly didn't look marvelous, which made suspect any use of the term for me, even though I thought I did still look marvelous, thank you very much.

I was feeling neglected even in the midst of all of the attention and old and vulnerable and unmarvelous in looks. This was only accentuated when Nigel didn't show up, his excuse provided by Margo, the fashion house's glue, who came to the party apparently only to tell me that Nigel regretted it, but "something had come up" with the show that might be a showstopper and he couldn't leave work. She was going right back there herself. And then my sister--my four year's younger sister, Jennifer, who had followed me to London--also just breezed through, dressed to kill, but really dressed to be laid, and was "Kiss, kiss. I'll come by to see you tomorrow afternoon." And then I was left with people who didn't want to be here and to be reminded how old we all were becoming any more than I did.

And then Nigel didn't come home that night. And, worse, when I went in to work just a few hours late the next morning, I got there in time to see Nigel and one of the new, young, American-like-I was at twenty, models, Gerald, getting out of the back of Nigel's car at the entrance of our fashion house building. Gerald had all of the "just been fucked by the boss" glow that I remember having had back in New York when I was twenty and looking to rise in the entertainment industry and Nigel swept into town and wined and dined and laid me for my first time.

Ten years ago, when I was twenty. When I was young. When I was young enough for Nigel to want to fuck.

"It's not what you think," Margo said, following the line of my glare from the third-floor window down to the building's entrance and observing the set of my jaw.''

"What's not what I think, Margo?" I asked through clinched teeth.

"Nigel was just taking Gerald to the solicitors to get his contracts signed."

"And that's why Gerald looks all aglow," I'd sarcastically asked. "Because he's just signed a good contract?"

"Yes, that's why he looks happy," Margo had answered. "How did you feel when you signed your first long-term modeling contract?" And then, when I didn't answer, she continued. "Nigel was here, working all night. I know, I was here too. Gerald wasn't here. Nigel worships you, Lee. This show has us all on edge. What you need is a reset, I think."

"If you say so," I said. But I softened my tone. I knew that Margo was just trying to help, trying to keep everything on an even keel here and to head off any fireworks this close to the show opening. But Margo would lie for Nigel. I knew that too. Margo would open her veins and bleed out for Nigel if she thought that would keep everything on an even keel.

There was a time when I would have done that for Nigel too--and when I believed he would do that for me. Nigel was in his late fifties now, but he was still tall and elegant and slender--and commanding. He could still leave me panting in bed--when we did it, which wasn't nearly as often now as it once had been.

But I now was thirty, and Nigel had a crop of new, young, models to work with.

* * * *

"Margo wouldn't lie to you, Lee," my sister, Jennifer, assured me in what she said had to be a shorter "stop by" at Nigel and my flat than she had anticipated. "I think Margo cares more about you than she does Nigel. I think it's just bad timing on Nigel's part to plan a show that doesn't put you on the runway at a vulnerable time for you. Believe me, I'm beginning to feel the thirties' jitters myself."

Jennifer was twenty-six. This wasn't helping. Well, it helped a bit. I accepted the Jennifer knew how I felt about this. Jennifer was gorgeous and still would be when she was thirty. But then it would be downhill from there, and Jennifer relied on her good looks just as I did. In the professions we were in, youth and good looks were everything. Jennifer had followed me from Pennsylvania via Marcel's performance art school in New York and now was a high-class hooker. She worked for an international escort agency with a branch here in London. When she'd come, briefly, to my party the previous evening, she was on her way to a dinner and the theater with a French film director followed by the night in his hotel room. She was dressed to the nines this afternoon too. She was on her way to escort an American businessman at a cocktail party, which would conclude with fun and games in his hotel room.

I didn't judge her. She had drifted into this the same as I had. I had even been in porn films for two years. She hadn't gone that public, although few recognized me from those years even though I'd been a hit in such movies as the fetish double feature Kibris Delight, set in Cyprus and featuring me and a whole bunch of hunky Turks. I'd been a redhead with green eyes for those films. I was, in real life, a blond with blue eyes. My then-temporary feature that became a focal point of my bared body had been the tattoo of a gecko on my lower left belly that faded after each movie and had to be renewed for the next one. I had gotten the gecko permanently inked just as I was giving up doing porn movies, which I had always since taken as an admonishment that I wasn't as brilliant as I once thought I was. Still every man I'd lain under since that had said he liked the tattoo.