Capital Treasures

"Come up to my room," Vincente whispered into Toby's blond curls after they'd come out of the kiss.

So, it was to be a longer night for Toby.

Vincente had added an additional service for Toby to perform in his hotel room. It sounded strange unless and until one took into account that Vincente was a photographer. He showed Toby a portfolio of photos he had that was a special line of male nudes.

"Your face won't be shown and it will be very artistic," he'd assured the high-end rent-boy.

There really wasn't any discussion involved; the man had paid for the service. He was a genius at lighting and posing, though. For the initial shots, most done in the frame of the window or the door to the bathroom or those of the fancy wooden armoire, he had Toby's face turned away. The young blond was, of course, naked and fully exposed otherwise. For the shots, some of Toby masturbating, on the bed, Toby wore a half-face mask. One issue that Toby thought would be an impediment was that he had a tattoo of a small lizard, a gecko, on his lower belly on the right side. Vincente was a good enough photographer that he managed not to include it in any of the shots—because Toby didn't want him to.

Vincente worked naked, as well, and he worked himself up in arousal as he moved around, posing Toby and clicking off shots. When he'd caught the young man's ejaculation, he set the camera aside, mounted the bed, and, exclaiming, without fanfare, "Allarga le gambe, ragazzo—Spread your legs, boy," mounted Toby, and fucked him. No need for seduction; this was a male whore he'd bought.

The man was huge—both obese and muscular, tall and broad. He was big cocked and his balls hung low. He was a proficient cocksman, though, knowing how to get the easiest and deepest access despite his huge belly. Toby let the man take charge and pose him in the chosen positions of the fuck just as he had done in the photo session.

The young rent-boy spent time on all fours while the man fucked him like a dog, and he spent time stretched out on the man's body, facing the ceiling, his feet pressed to Vincente's bent knees and supporting himself suspended above the man by palming the mattress on either side of Vincente's chest. Vincente wanted to go deep and stay there as Toby panted and groaned and he left the thick ring in his cock head to do his work. Toby felt the punishing rub of the thick and smooth metal of the ring as the cock worked his channel deep.

"Oh fuckin' shit, you're huge. Dick me. Dick me hard!" Toby cried out, knowing the man would take that as a compliment from a male whore. The switch from refined speech with a slight hint of an Oxford accent to raw street language was meant to convey that the man had completely disarmed the rent-boy. It worked every time Toby employed it.

"Prendilo, bel ragazzo puttana! Aperto al mio cazzo!" Vincente responded, with Toby only later finding that the man had called him a pretty boy whore and urged him to open up to the cock. The man who had moved in such a stately manner at the concert and at dinner, acting very much in a refined manner, became a rutting bear when he was on top of the much smaller and younger man. He fucked Toby mercilessly like this was his last go at the act in life and as if he owned the young man's body, which, for these few hours, he did.

Toby finished, the big man being expert at holding off his ejaculation, by riding the man's cock in the cowboy position, facing Vincente's feet, grasping the man's knees, and bouncing up and down on the buried cock. There was nothing refined in this. This was mutual raw need—or so Toby designed it to be taken that way by the client.

Toby earned his fee, the Italian walrus was pleased both with the fuck and the photographic souvenirs he was left with, and Toby did, indeed find himself in a photo standing next to David Liu in the morning's Washington Post "Lifestyle" section.

The publicity was not all that welcome. Young men of the night were not to be associated that openly in print with their big-spending johns.

For Toby, though, Vincente had been both a surprise and a refreshing experience. And, always eager to learn new phrases in foreign languages, Toby had heard "Ti sto fottendo—I fuck you," "Allarga le gambe, ragazzo puttana—Spread your legs, boy whore," and "Aperto al mio cazzo—Take my cock" often enough that night to remember how to pronounce them and to repeat them to Terrence on the escort agency duty desk when he was asked how the assignment had gone.

* * * *

Hardesty was doing his best to make the Thai lad as tight as possible. Lek had whimpered, "Make me feel it." The detective was doing what he could to comply. Lek had taken him and the deputy police chief, Jackson Davis, together at Davis's Northwest Washington house backed up to the Fitzgerald Center tennis courts the previous week. He had really been able to open up for a little guy.

Lek's wrists were restrained at the headboard in Hardesty's bedroom of the Crystal City, Alexandria, high-rise apartment house beside the Reagan National Airport runways across the Potomac from the national Mall area. The Thai rent-boy was on his back. Straps held his legs together at the ankles, knees, and thighs, and Hardesty, saddled up on the young guy's ass, had Lek's ankles hooked on his left shoulder. Hardesty grasped the smaller man's narrow waist between his hands and pulled Lek's channel on and off his tightly sheathed cock. There already was a dildo shoved in there with him.

The Vice detective was big cocked. Lek felt it, crying out, "Yes, yes, fuck me, you big brute." The "big brute" sounded sexy to Hardesty spoken with a Thai accent.

Hardesty was a favorite of the Dupont Circle area street rent-boys. They all said they wanted to take him—to be able to say they'd taken him. They wanted to be able to endure and master the fetishes he used. It enhanced the bundle of tricks they could offer their johns.

Lek took Hardesty now. Hardesty, with some unfinished business with the Thai rent-boy from Davis's pool party, had been looking for Lek around the Dupont Circle beat for a couple of days. By asking around, the Vice detective learned that someone meeting Lek's description, in addition to working the streets around Dupont Circle, danced the pole in the back room on the second floor of the Green Lantern Club just off Thomas Circle. Indeed, that was where Hardesty found the Thai rent-boy the previous night. Lek must have known the detective was asking for him, because, from the moment Hardesty entered the room, Lek was dancing just for him. A stagehand came for Hardesty after Lek's set was over and took him backstage.

A cop's privilege recognized without the need for words, Hardesty fucked the willowy Thai on the chair in front of the vanity in the small dressing room, Lek still in the silky black slip, black mesh stockings, and red spike high heels he'd worn on the stage and with his ankles on Hardesty's shoulders and his fists clinched behind Hardesty's neck.

After the initial fuck and with no resistance to the demand, Hardesty had taken the Thai rent-boy back to the Alexandria apartment, and after rough-playing the male whore, working him over between information sessions, Hardesty got all of the straight answers he could want for any question he asked of Lek. Even after the "tell me what you know" session was over, Hardesty fucked the rent-boy periodically through the night on his bed in positions and with fetishes that both delighted and taxed the young man. This was standard fare for new boys establishing themselves on the Dupont Circle streets, and Hardesty was such a hunk that the rent-boys welcomed it. Lek certainly did.

What had sent Hardesty in search of Lek was having discovered the Thai rent-boy sniffing around in Jackson Davis's house the day that Davis and he had shared the young man at Davis's pool. After they'd done so and moved into firing up the barbecue grill, Lek had disappeared. Davis sent Hardesty into the kitchen to rummage around in the refrigerator for more beer. While there, Hardesty had heard a noise deeper in the house and paused outside Davis's study door and observed Lek snooping around in drawers, on bookshelves, and behind paintings. Lek didn't see him, but it stuck in Hardesty's mind what Davis had said about rent-boys being involved in burglary rings and how he wanted Hardesty to help track that down. Could it be that Lek was part of the ring? Davis had said he'd met the little Thai guy at a gay club near Dupont circle. Did he have a pimp? Was he involved in more than prostitution?

Those were the questions that had sent Hardesty looking for this male whore who hadn't been on his radar before. Sometime between fucks in the night, he got his answers. Lek gave up the information easily, while babbling through the effects of what was churning inside him. By the time he was finished, Hardesty also knew where Lek had come from, how willing he was to be in the business he was in, whether he wanted to get out of it to be something else, and whether his pimp was treating him right. Hardesty fucked them hard but he made sure they wanted to do this and were being treated well.

"You saw me?" Lek asked, shocked, when confronted with having snooped in Jackson Davis's house. "I didn't take anything."

"But why were you snooping around, Lek? How did you get hooked up with the man? Do you know who he is? Did someone send you?"

"Who is he? I was just told to get in his bed and stay close to him. And that didn't happen. That one day and he sent me away. Andre wasn't happy about that."

"Andre? Is Andre DuCard your pimp?"

"Yeah. Andre wanted me to become the big black dude's lover and then report on what he did. But the black guy is too much into group sex and parties to hook up with just one rent-boy. There's no way he was going to concentrate on just me and that I was going to be moving into his house with him. All I saw in the house when I was looking were photos of a lot of cops. I wasn't sorry I didn't get done what DuCard wanted me to do."

"That was Jackson Davis," Hardesty said. "He's the new deputy police chief of the District. DuCard wanted you to spy on the police department's front office."

"Shit. Fuck. Andre got me to approach him in a club where I was dancing and get him to want to fuck me. He invited me to that house party."

"Shit and fuck is right," Hardesty said. What he was sorry later that he didn't ask was what club Lek had met Davis at. It obviously was the Green Lantern, where Lek danced. "Well, don't worry about it as long as DuCard has let you off the hook of wriggling your way into Davis's house and bed. Now look here. Do you know what these are?"

"Restraints," Lek had said, a little smile on his face.

"What I like to do is—"

"Then do it. I heard what you do with guys. They say it's good training. Do it."

"And this?"

"It's a flogger," Lek whimpered.

"Don't worry. I won't raise blood," Hardesty responded.

Then Hardesty had done it. When, after a bit of mild seasoning with the flogger, he'd filled the bulb of his condom from the position with Lek's wrists tied off at the headboard and his legs strapped together, ankles on Hardesty's shoulder, the apartment doorbell rang. Hardesty looked up at the monitor at the wall to see that it was Steve, who he'd asked to come by when he could—they had cameras and elaborate alarm systems on their apartment door as this was where Toby did some of his work, bringing johns to the apartment. That had the danger of attracting not-so-welcome visitors.

"Stay there like that," Hardesty said, as if Lek could have unbound himself and moved. "I've got a visitor to take care of. Then I'll let you clean up and I'll take you back on the street—and you'll forget to tell Andre DuCard about our conversation completely." The latter was understood not to be just a request.

"Thanks for coming by, Steve, and for doing this for me," Hardesty said, when he let in his friend, who also, fortuitously, was the photographer who had taken the video of Hardesty and Davis sharing Lek by the pool at Davis's house. "And, sorry, we'll have to keep our voices down. The guy in my bed is recovering." Not only that, but Hardesty knew that Toby had a full evening and night assignment later in the day with a visiting Italian that would go from an Andrea Bocelli concert at the Kennedy Center to "whatever" and was trying to sleep late in his own room. "Did you bring me something?"

"Yes, here are photos I took off the video that only show Davis's face. I told him the video film was damaged before he put it in the camera so he wasn't getting anything off it. So, you have all that could be used—and it's of him."

"Thanks a million, Steve. It was a miracle that it's you he got to take the film. He may get something on me, but not with this. I owe you big."

"Now you've got something on him. You don't owe me anything. I owe everything to you. But only use those photos if you really have to and if he has to be taken down and will be taken down. He'll know where they came from and that I didn't give him what he wanted."

"Understood. Thanks for having my back. Still, I owe you. Are you up for a little Thai?"

"I'm always up for whatever you have on offer," Steve said, with a grin.

While Steve fucked the bound and quite vocal Thai rent-boy, Lek, on Hardesty's bed, the detective sat at the breakfast bar, drinking coffee, and went over the status of what Davis had him working on—and perhaps what Davis was trying to hide. This was going to be a complex and delicate case to maneuver in trying to minimize the collateral damage. Why couldn't people just leave the setup with gay prostitution in the District alone? It had been working to everyone's benefit.

He went into his bedroom to find that Steve and Lek were being downright chummy. Neither minded when he climbed on board and shared the Thai rent-boy with the photographer.

After Steve left Hardesty thought on how fortuitous this was—that Jackson Davis was so new to the job that he didn't know that Hardesty had been the one who took Steve out of living in a cardboard box in an alley and helped him get an official photographer's position in the department. It had only been the next day after the party, that it had dawned on Hardesty that the taking of a video of Davis and him sharing Lek—and maybe the whole setup—was Davis collecting material he could use to control guys in the department. Before now, Hardesty hadn't had any thought that Davis would do this. Now he wasn't sure. Getting the film destroyed was good enough. Having his own photos was just gravy, but they'd have to see how that might have to go.

Tucking the photos in the safe under the kitchen island, behind a pile of pots, he moved back into his bedroom, untying the robe he'd shrugged into to open the door for Steve.

"Now, where were we?" he asked, with a smile, to the trussed-up, panting and whimpering Thai rent-boy on his bed. "Or do you not want me to come back to you?"

Lek moaned, but he didn't say "no."

* * * *

Shortly before noon, Lek having been released, cleaned up, and sent on his way, Hardesty heard his roommate and lover, Toby Drake, stirring, and he went to the kitchen to start mixing up brunch omelets. Toby did most of the cooking that wasn't brought in or the two didn't catch on the fly, but Hardesty knew the young man had had an assignment the previous night and had another on this evening that involved escorting a client to a concert, with dinner and whatever else afterward. This was a big one. Hardesty knew Toby would spend all afternoon being groomed and gymed in preparation for that. The two had been together for more than five years now, and Hardesty had learned well to live with Toby's lifestyle just as the professional hooker had learned to live with Hardesty being a Vice cop—and one who was quite demanding sexually.

The two couldn't have been more different as men, as was evident in what they wore to brunch. Hardesty was in droopy athletic shorts and sandals without socks. Toby showed up in an elegant silk robe—and nothing else. Where they were the same was that they were both handsome hunks of their own species.

Not quite twenty-five yet, Toby was perpetually boyish, which was a major aspect of his draw with johns. He looked too young, too innocent, to give a client what he wanted and demanded in both companionship and sex. He was young and wholesome looking but sexy at the same time once he got into the throes of sex. Really, really sexy. His body was boyishly perfect. He was a dyed blond, but artfully so, and took the time to ensure his trimmed pubes were blond as well. The hair was auburn at the roots, with strong blond highlights, but it looked like he'd let it go that way on purpose, like the hair was just frosted. Sometimes he went fully platinum. He had hardware—a small ring in his eyebrow and one in his navel—and a tattoo of a gecko, a small lizard on his lower belly above the right hip. Those who knew him well biblically knew that the gecko covered an erogenous trigger that, when rubbed, sent the young man into sexual overdrive. He wasn't heavily muscled, but there wasn't any fat on him either. His stomach was flat and his hips narrow, but his buttocks flared out into perfect bubbles. The face was boyish too, almost pretty. His eyes were hazel.

The two had first met just over five years earlier, when Toby, under the name of Todd, which he still used with johns, was dancing the pole in a gay club, barely old enough to say "yes" and not old enough to be handling liquor in the club. The two had clicked immediately when Hardesty found that the young blond was willing—and able—to take the extreme fetish sex that turned the Vice detective on as well as the nine inches Hardesty was swinging. Hardesty didn't treat Toby like other Vice cops did. And when Toby had been kidnapped by a sex trafficker, Hardesty had pulled out all stops to save him. The two had been together in a highly unlikely alliance ever since.

Hardesty, in his mid-forties, was a complete contrast to the boyishly handsome Toby. Thanks to his active cop's life, great genes, and regular work in a gym, Hardesty had a solid, hard body-builder's physique. The man was toned, exuding an aura of danger, but also of authority and self-confidence. He was sexy, but clearly in a fully masculine, mature way. He was scarred up, revealing that he was an alley-fighter thug and looked the part. Submissive men gravitated to him, going hard just looking at him. He was hung like a god. His age showed in the gray struggling with the black of his buzz cut and in the close-cropped mustache and beard. And he'd had a hard life, as evidenced in rugged features and a nose beaten slightly off kilter. But he was one sexy dude. When adding to that that he was a captive to the extreme fetish vices he policed as a Vice cop and used his body to obtain cooperation in his investigations, he promised to take his young men hard. There were young men who wanted it this way. Toby was one of them. Most men in the business by choice were.

The contrast in the two men showed in the apartment they shared as well. Toby's slice of the apartment, which was used as his place of business, as needed, was sleek and elegant. Hardesty's one room, the smaller of two bedrooms, was tacky, thrown together from furniture moved from his parents' house in the District. But his bed, equipped with restraints, was where they exercised their sexual desires and needs more than any other place in the unit.

The apartment was near the top of a high-rise building among a good many others along the streets paralleling the Potomac River across from the center of the nation's capital, with the runways of the Ronald Reagan National Airport, there to ensure that members of Congress and members of the administration in power, would have a convenient, quick getaway to their home states, between the line of high-rises and the river.