Circle Foolery

Hedley indeed, was finished painting, although I could see there were areas of paint that hadn't completely dried yet. I resisted the urge to smudge the wet paint. This was going to be an honest competition. All that was left was the drop cloth plus several closed cans of paint. It just needed to be picked up and hauled away.

So, where was Hedley then, I thought.

Becoming aware of sounds coming from the master bedroom suite, I realized what Steve had meant about Hedley having been made to answer the call before he left.

I was drawn to the door into the master bedroom, which was open enough that I could see the bed. What I saw was the familiar figure of Walter Gardner, in his white silk robe, which had fallen off his left shoulder and was just bunched up on his right side to show that he was naked under it. He was on his knees, but leaning back, his beefy buttocks almost touching the backs of his calves. It was clear there was a man whose buttocks rested in the tops of Gardner's thighs. His legs were raised and spread, held out by Gardner's grips under his knees. I could tell Gardner was fucking him hard and deep by the clutching and release of the dominator's buttocks cheeks.

Kurt Hedley was making sounds that indicated he was been royally fucked. I saw that I wasn't the only one who was being subjected to cock play as part of the testing for this contract. And I well knew that Walter Gardner was capable of delivering a royal fuck.

I would have turned away, but Steve came up close behind me. One hand went to my throat, cupping my chin as he buried his lips in the hollow of my neck. The other hand palmed my belly, but as we stood there, continuing to watch Gardner fucking Hedley, Steve's hand went down to unzipping me, pulling my cock out, and stroking it.

"Come away with me," Steve whispered in my ear. "Hedley will be gone in a bit and you can start your work on the wall then. For now, let it be us. It's been too long since it was us."

He was right. It had been too long since it was us.

I went with him to his bedroom, where we undressed each other, stood and rocked against each other as he reached between us and frotted our cocks while he was kissing me from the lips, down to the hollow of my throat, and down to my nipples.

He was a physical trainer. He had a magnificent body. He fucked me bent over his bed, mounted on me from above and behind. He turned me on my back, held my legs raised and spread, and fucked me in a missionary position. He lay on his back, with me stretched out on top of him, looking up at the ceiling, and being fucked in the crab position.

Two hours later, I returned to the upper foyer where I was to paint a wall. The drop cloth and cans of paint at Hedley's wall were gone. I looked out a window. Hedley's Escalade was gone as well.

I went to my van and pulled out what I needed to start sketching on the wall. The image of what I wanted to paint--extending the Rhine River bank beyond Marian's mural, to include a fairy castle on a hill overlooking a village at the water's edge, with a toll tower on an island in the center of the river--was already in my mind.

I brought my supplies up to the room and started to sketch on the wall.

I heard him call from his bedroom. He was the master. I had to answer the call, just as Kurt Hedley had had to do--which had made him late in finishing and leaving.

Gardner's white silk robe had fluttered to the floor below the bed. He was naked. Steve's work with him had reaped benefits. He was trimmer, more in shape. I could say he wasn't desirable. He was a forceful cocksman.

I lay, shoulder blades and cheek to bed, my butt resting on his thighs, Gardner grasping my legs under my knees, holding my legs spread and raised, as he rocked forward, mining my passage deep, fucking me, fucking me.

My gaze went to the door into the room from the hall I was painting. Steve was standing there, cock out, stroking it, watching me being fucked.

This job was going to take longer than I had estimated it would.

Before I finished up the wall at Windsor Farms, though, I had made a decision that, although I'd continue bidding on this contract, I wouldn't commit to foreign trips to work on international hotels or continue to warm Gardner's bed and go under his sway. This was prompted by Steve and I rekindling what we'd once had. I pledged that I'd leave Ava and when he could separate himself from working for her and Marian Gardner, he'd move in with me in Washington, D.C., and we'd try to make a go of it as a committed couple.

My life was starting to come together. I already felt free of Ava, realizing how hard our life as a lie had weighed on me.

If I won the bid, I'd be painting another wall at the Gardner's South Carolina house where it would coordinate with his announcement at a party there on April 1st of the hotel chain's expansion abroad. It would be a fortuitous date. Even if I won the contract, I would make it an April Fool's joke on him that he thought he could bring me entirely under his sway. I would waltz away from him with Steve.

* * * *

Gardner was on his back, with me stretched out top of him, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom in the South Carolina house on Spanish Point, in Beaufort, facing the Beaufort River. He put me in a full Nelson, his arms snaking under my pits and his fists locked behind my neck, so I wasn't going anywhere for a while. His dick was up my passage, providing another point of having me locked down. The face of Phillip Matheson, Gardner's neighbor, a buzz-cut, squared away man in his early fifties who looked like a Marine colonel because that was exactly what he was--chief of training at the nearby Parris Island Marine training base--loomed in sight above me. He knelt between Gardner's and my spread legs.

Matheson gave me a smile, ran his hands up my inner thighs, coaxing them more open. I complied, and he took up each leg, one after the other, kissing the inner thighs and hooking my ankles on his shoulders. He hovered over me. I squirmed in Gardner's embrace, but I wasn't going anywhere. I whimpered as the Marine officer positioned his cock head at my hole, above where Gardner's shaft already was rooted.

And then I cried out and writhed and panted hard as the colonel slowly forced his way inside, until he was as buried as Gardner was. He grasped my waist between his hands, and, as Garner held inside me, Matheson fucked me.

Afterward, the two rolled off to either side of me in Gardner's king-sized bed and snored off to sleep. Neither stirred as I climbed over Gardner and went to the bathroom to clean up, shower, and pull myself together. It wasn't the first time they'd doubled me--or that each had fucked me solo--since I'd been in Beaufort to paint that wall for Gardner.

I'd won the contract, so I was painting the wall mural for his party on April 1st to announce the expansion of his hotel chain abroad. I'd decided to either limit the contract or give it up. I'd been e-mailing Steve on my plans to leave Ava and for him to move in with me. He'd answered occasionally. He wasn't much for communications.

The next day was April 1st. I'd just managed to complete the wall mural in the entrance room to the Gardner house party room off the back of his house, with windows on three sides overlooking the Beaufort River. He kept telling people that the mural I was painting was of what they could see if the wall of the house behind it was gone. But that wasn't what I was painting at all. Marian Gardner had given me a photo of what to paint. It was the view from house, but not one in this climate, and it was of the ocean, not a river. She'd told me to leave it blank in the bottom right corner--that she had some special to paint there for later.

I tried to tell Gardner that the mural wasn't going to be what he thought it was, but he was so busy with other things, including the party arrangements, that he hadn't listened to me. I didn't think he'd even taken a look at what I was painting.

While I was up in the night, I noticed the sensor lights in the auto court outside and had come on. I looked out to see that Marian Gardner's Lexus convertible was there. I hadn't realized she was coming down for the party, and I hoped she didn't come into the master bedroom to find the three of us in the bed. To ensure that didn't include me, I went to my room rather than back to the bed. When I came into the bedroom, I found the colonel dressing.

"You're going home?" I whispered.

"Yeah. And Walter tells me he's leaving right after the party. If you need someplace to stay before you leave, you're more than welcome to come over to my place."

"Thanks," I answered. I knew that would involved party time. I didn't care. He was a hunk and a half. "Be careful leaving. Mrs. Gardner's car is outside. I don't know if Mr. Gardner knew she'd be coming in tonight."

"Shit," he said. "Thanks for letting me know. I'll go down the back stairs."

Luckily it was a big old house. It had servants' stairs at the back.

Garner slept through our conversation. I went to my room and tried to sleep, but couldn't. A couple of hours later I got up and went to my bathroom, which also overlooked the auto court. I looked out and saw that Marian's Lexus was gone now.

That was peculiar. The house wasn't exactly on the beaten path from anywhere to anywhere else that Marian might be going. Anyway, Gardner was expecting to find me in his bed when he woke up and Marian was gone, so I returned to the master bedroom.

When Gardner woke, he obviously did expect me to be there. I was sleeping on my stomach. He rolled toward me and ran his hand over my body. The hand eventually went between my thighs and I spread them for him so that he could pull my cock through and stroke that and play with my balls until I came for him. Then he climbed on top of me and rode my ass to a morning release. He did like his morning sex.

I overheard him in the bathroom practicing a speech he was going to make at the party. There was the announcement part of the hotel chain expanding, but he went on to get personal. I don't know if he was still working on the speech for the party or one he planned to give his wife separately, but that didn't reduce the shock value of what he had to say. He said he was using this occasion to tell Marian he had the goods on her and was divorcing her. He named sex partners he had proof she had been enjoying and, shockingly, that these included my wife, Ava. He said he was off to supervise the final construction of the new hotel in Doha, and he gloated that he was taking Marian's physical trainer, Steve Baylor, with him. He didn't mention me.

That was a double whammy, and it sent me out of the bedroom and down the stairs to the ground floor. I needed to get out of the house to process what he'd said.

I only got as far as the reception room to the party venue. I saw it as soon as I entered the room, and I knew now what Marian had come and gone in the night. She had filled out the painting I'd done on the wall. In the lower-right quadrant a summer house now appeared. There were three figures in the structure, a three-way fuck scene. Marian and Ava both straddling Steve Baylor. Marian was an expert, swift painter. There was no question who the figures were--or that she knew exactly what they looked like naked, including not only Ava but Steve as well.

Marian had left papers on a nearby table and I lifted and scanned through them with trembling hands. Marian had known Walter was gathering evidence to dump her. She'd stolen a march on him. She had evidence of Walter with men, as well--including me. She'd counter any dirt he came up with. In the meantime, he was to enjoy the mural she had me paint. It wasn't, of course of the Beaufort house. It was of the one she'd bought on Cape Cod and already partied in with Ava and Steve. They were a threesome, Marian said. They'd live and operate from Cape Cod now.

Well, shit, I thought, as I went upstairs to my room and packed. I'd take up Phillip Matheson's offer and go to his place. I wouldn't face off with Gardner. Let him find the wall mural and Marian's papers himself.

Fuck Walter. Fuck Marian. Fuck Ava. And fuck...

Steve. It all revolved around Steve. It had already turned to April 1st. April Fool's Day. There were more than one--or two, probably--April fools here. It all revolved around Steve. He was being tagged as going in three different directions. There was only one way he could go now, though. The rest of us knew he had been playing the others off. I didn't even want him anymore.

Of course I was one of the April fools here. I realized and accepted that. Who else, though? Or maybe all of us. I hadn't heard from him for a couple of weeks. Maybe he'd made fools of us all and had gone in another direction entirely.

But I wouldn't think of that now. Colonel Matheson had offered me hospitality and he was one hunk of a man. I'd lick my wounds and recover at his house--in his bed. Fuck all of the others.