Edge Running Ch. 04

I agreed to meet the Filipino businessman, Benjie Reyes, in a dimly lit bar off the lobby of the Grand Diamond City Casino Hotel. Reyes, a man of obvious wealth and with the bearing of comfortably being in command, was said to be both fabulously wealthy and highly secretive about where that wealth came from. This secretiveness always was a red flag for me as easily as I was finding myself in troubled circumstances. He wore his assurance and stature well. He was a good three inches taller than I was, quite thin, but hard-bodied, as I'd already discovered, with well-defined muscles. His face was handsome and perpetually calm and in control in demeanor. His hair was a wavy black, which, as I knew it was dyed, probably took ten years or more off what must be at least the late fifties in longevity. He always moved with grace and purpose, always pointed in the direction in which he intended to go. I had the feeling, though, that he might be more than one would want to contend with if they were successful in making him deviate from his course.

It was unusual that he asked me to meet him here. He had gotten everything he could have wanted from me the previous night, after he had attended the 11:00 p.m. male dance revue. I had seen him in the casino for a few days before that. I'd even been invited to sit beside him and accepted a drink from him at the roulette table. There hadn't been that second drink the first two times I'd encountered him on the casino floor. The second one only was offered and accepted at midnight, the previous evening, after I had come onto the casino floor after the dance revue he had attended. One of his bodyguards--I assumed the three young, muscled-up Filipino men with the constant serious expressions who floated somewhere within twenty feet of Reyes at all times were bodyguards--had attended the earlier show. I must have passed some sort of muster for Reyes himself to show up at the later performance.

Men like him, ones who were interested in taking the male dancers to their rooms after an evening at the casino, usually were one-time clients. And few of them could afford, after what they lost at the casino tables, to indulge in sex with one of the dancers more than once. There were so many other young men among the hotel staff in more menial and needy positions to dally with if they had more than one fling to indulge in and could afford during their stay in Poipet.

Reyes had had his night last night. We had shared a room service breakfast before he had let me leave his suite. He was a connoisseur of the fuck and he had stamina and edging technique. Following his guidance, I'd just laid out on my back, legs bent and spread, pelvis rolled up, and let him play my body like a violin. He was able to make me come three times on the king-sized bed in his suite in this position and, later, standing plastered to the floor-to-ceiling glass window looking out onto the hotel garden and then in the oversized bathtub before he finally would let himself release. And then, after breakfast, and before our final, shared shower, he'd taken me in the same position the Chinese gun dealer, Chao Tse-ho had, the man who had boasted of knowing the secrets of the Taoist "art of the bedchamber" and had convincingly shown me that he did.

Reyes sat at the foot of the bed, just as Chao had in much the same hotel suite as this one, and put me on his cock--a long if not terribly thick cock--facing away from him, my legs streaming back onto the bed past his hips, my chest cantilevered over the carpet at the foot of the bed, and Reyes grasping my wrists and arching my chest taunt like I was a drawn bow, while I just the leverage off my toes dug into the sheeting of the bed to pull myself on and off his shaft.

Reyes showed that Chao's coveted and secretive sexual techniques were known to at least one man in the Philippines. I was grateful they were as we had left Chao buried in a burnt-out insurgent camp in Thailand's remote Surin Province.

I had read the Filipino business man as one of the one-and-done casino high-rollers who had wanted to master and fuck a Westerner for the adventure of it--but only the once--and, thus, it was a surprise when one of his bodyguards approached me after the 11:00 show and asked me to join Reyes in the bar. None of the clientele here was that discreet, unless they'd made the mistake of bringing their wife or mistress with them, and they had no need to be discreet. Poipet was an "anything goes" fleshpot of pleasure for money.

"I am pleased you are joining me for a drink and a quiet conversation, young man," he said when I came into the bar. Tonight was emerald night, so I was wearing the tight white-silk trousers and an emerald-green sequined T-shirt that dipped in at the neckline and in the armpits that left nothing to the imagination of my physique. Of course, there wasn't anything to imagine anyway. The man had been to the late show, which ended in several seconds of baring it all, and he'd had me, naked, all night the previous night. He had made full use of my nakedness, adding his as well. I knew he dyed his head hair black, because his chest hair and pubes were salt and pepper.

I ordered scotch on the rocks and Reyes had three drinks brought for me, so the house rule of two drinks and the fee paid and a done deal was already being taken care of. The bar manager would have seen that and marked Reyes's tab for an all-night fuck, which is what the third drink was ordered for. I was pleased that I had pleased him the previous night, but I wasn't used to being that athletic and exhausted by sex two nights in a row on top of my dancing commitments, so I was a little apprehensive too.

"I enjoyed your performance immensely," he said after the drinks had been delivered. He was drinking as well.

"Thank you," I said. "The dancing does give us a good workout. It keeps us in shape--it's almost as beneficial as a night with a real man, like you." It sounded so lame, but it usually contributed to big tips from men like this.

"Yes, the dancing is impressive too, but you have talents you have demonstrated far beyond that. For instance, I understand that you're a doctor and have credentials with Doctors Without Borders."

"Yes, I do," I said, somewhat apprehensive now. What did this dude want? He could get whatever drugs he wanted through his own networks, and I still retained scruples enough not to give prescriptions out like candy. Now that I thought of it, I rather thought he might have been on something the previous night. He was able to keep it up nearly all night. "But I'm not really sure--"

"I'll get directly to the offer. I have a large share of a major casino in the Philippines--in Cebu City. I'm here to recruit staff for the hotel and casino. People in the Philippines like to be served by Thai or Cambodians--and they absolutely love their entertainers to be beautiful, cut Westerners, like you. I'm gathering staff to take to the Philippines, and I'm interested in you not only as a performer and prostitute at the casino and hotel but also in helping to keep the others healthy en route to the Philippines."

"I'm happy working here," I said.

"Would you be happy making twice what you make here and being somewhere that wasn't as primitive and isolating as this?"

"Making twice as much? Do you have any idea what I make here?"

"I know exactly what you make here, including the bedding fees and the tipping scale in Poipet. It's nothing compared to what you can make with me."

"Would I be expected to prescribe drugs?"

"Only to make sure they were safely administered if a client needed monitoring. You'd only be called on as a doctor to help men be safe. On the dancefloor, you'd be the lead dancer, just as here. And we'd make sure that no one in the United States knew where you were or who you were now."

"You've looked into my past?"

"Intimately. And if we can find out what we have about you and where you are now, I'm sure that those in Bangkok or Chicago can do so as well." He was giving me a pointed look, which wasn't lost on me. Perhaps if I turned his offer down, he'd let those in Bangkok and Chicago know where I was? I was running entirely too much on edge.

"Can I think about it?" I asked.

"For a couple of days. We leave in two days. I have almost completed filling out the staffing. We'll fly from Phnom Penh--a private flight, so that if anyone is about to trace you here who you don't want to find you, you will have fallen off the face of the earth."

That was good to know. "So, then, are we finished here?" I'd only drunk the first of the three scotch rocks that had been placed before me. But, then, they'd only been put there for signaling and my drinks had been weak versions of the real thing. I didn't have to finish them just to be polite.

"I've paid for the night," he said.

"I understand that."

"But it's not for me. The offer I'm making to you is conditional on just how well you perform--and not just for me."

"Then who?" I asked.

He didn't directly answer me. "Have you taken multiple well-endowed men at once, together?" he asked.

I should have known. Reyes and the three bodyguards guided me back upstairs to his suite, and Reyes sat, naked, in a chair, watching and stroking himself off, as his three bodyguards fucked me on the bed--separately in rotation, and in combinations.

I was assured when I hobbled out of the room the next morning that I had performed satisfactorily and the offer of employment at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino on the island of Cebu in the Philippines was still good for the next two days.

"There's another dancer, the dark-haired one, more muscular than you, who dances mostly to your left as viewed from the audience who I'll offer the position to if you don't accept," Reyes said.

That was a major consideration in accepting the offer. There were some saying that Jason was getting to be a better dancer than I was--he was four years younger. I would be crushed if I stayed and he went and the other dancers chose to believe he was the first choice. Playing on my vanity was making me waver in his direction.

* * * *

I spent most of the rest of the day resting. I had been doubled before, but not by two sets of men in the same night. I also didn't want to think about the offer from Benjie Reyes. There seemed to be something fishy about it that I couldn't quite grasp, so I didn't want to think about it at all. I had two days--well, a day and a half--now to mull it. I was quite aware that it came with a threat to tell Dusit Thanat, in Bangkok, at least, about where I was if I didn't take the offer. And that American spy, Sam Winterberry, had made quite clear to me that Dusit Thanat had meant for me to be killed. Sleeping was a way of avoiding thinking, and the night games had exhausted me, so I slept most of the day away.

I went through the evening of performances on habit and training. At the end of the 11:00 show, one of the hotel concierges came to the dressing room when I was changing--tonight the sequined T-shirt was cobalt blue--and handed me a room key.

"You've been engaged for the night," he said. The wad of tip money that came with the key was quite generous. I sighed at the prospect of another night with Reyes. I'd thought he was going to lay off of me for a day to let give me space to decide on his offer. But when I looked at the room number on the key, it wasn't the suite he'd been in for the previous two nights. It was a suite, but not his.

And, indeed, it wasn't his. The room seemed deserted when I entered it, but after a moment, the American spy, Sam Winterberry, walked out of the bathroom. He had a hotel robe hanging loosely from his shoulders. He wasn't wearing anything else, though. He was as hard-bodied as I'd remembered him to be, and he was in erection.

He tied my wrists together with the sash of the robe, pushing my arms over my head as he pushed me onto my back on the bed. He raised and spread my legs, holding them out with a strong grip under my knees, and he pushed in between my thighs, thrust up inside me, and fucked me brutally.

"That was so we both understood the pecking order here," he said, when he was finished with me--which made me feel finished in no uncertain terms. Just like that he'd become master and made me slave again.

"I thought you were gone," I said, as he sat down on the bed beside me and took my cock in his hand. He stroked me as he answered. He'd taken his pleasure--or made his point cruelly, if that's what he was about. He hadn't given a thought to bringing me off while he was doing so. He was keeping me in place now but taking me to a climax.

"I was. But our operation wasn't finished, it seems. You were part of phase one, and performed satisfactorily. I see no reason why you can't continue with it. We don't want more to know about this than absolutely necessary."

"What are you talking about?" I asked. I was only half paying attention to what he was saying because of what he was doing. He was giving me an expert hand job, but he was edging me, taking me to the brink and then backing off.

"We didn't want to just interdict the Chinese arms sales to the Thai insurgents. We wanted to turn their agent, send him back to Shanghai, and use him to keep track of the arms deals--and, hopefully, to control them. It was unfortunate that we lost him at the camp in Surin."

"Yes, so?"

"They are sending another agent to find out what happened to the first shipment and to Chao. We want to work the same operation on him as we did on Chao here at the casino--using you again."

Oh, shit. But then I was close to coming. I was panting, not able to think of anything but a good climax. Winterberry edged me again, though. And, more than that, he rolled over toward me, put me on my knees on the bed, my chest and cheek to the sheets, my arms still bound at the wrist and flung over my head, mounted me in a doggie, and took his pleasure on me again. During the fuck this time, I got my wrists untied--I wasn't secured firmly with the sash--and reached under me and took care of my own climax needs. I don't think Winterberry even was aware that I had managed to get release myself. He didn't give a shit whether I did or not--as long as I accepted his control--and his cock.

The rest of the time was spent going over my responsibilities again in this operation. It was to be almost identical to how they--rather, we, since I was now just another American spy, apparently--had suborned and blackmailed Chao. I was just fortuitous, I suppose, that they found that the agent being sent was as bent a top as Chao had been.

The first thing I did the next day when I was conscious and mobile again was send a note to Benjie Reyes, accepting his offer and hoping that I could be taken from the casino without giving anyone notice or seeing me go. Dropping off the face of the earth like this was a big risk, I knew, especially since I was still highly suspicious that Reyes wasn't being completely honest with me about the offer. But I was more afraid of Winterberry and being sucked down into U.S. intelligence operations that were more than I could handle and that, in the end, would chew me up and spit me out, destroyed, without an ounce of remorse.

The drive to the airport in the capital city of Phnom Penh took four-and-a half hours. I rode in a black Mercedes sedan, sitting in the front seat beside one of Reyes's bodyguards as driver. Reyes sat alone in the back. We were followed by a military-style transport truck, with a canvas top over the cargo area. I only got a glimpse in the back of that as I was being escorted to the Mercedes. The cargo was people.

When we boarded the private airplane at the airport, I saw that there were some thirty Asians--both men and women. They sat in the larger compartment at the back. The two other bodyguards who had fucked me in Reyes's suite sat with them. They must have been in the cargo truck for the drive to the airport. It was a shock to my system to see that they cradled machineguns as if the Asians needed guarded. Reyes had told me that they all had employment contracts and had wanted to go to the Philippines.

I sat in more luxury at the front of the plane with Reyes and the bodyguard who had driven the Mercedes. That bodyguard was packing a gun in an armpit holster. I had signed a contract too. Was I really free here, though?

After we took off, Reyes pointed to a large plastic case taking up a spare seat. "That's your medical supplies if you need them in flight. Remember that your duties include doctoring any of the other passengers if they need it."

"I remember," I said. Those services weren't called on during the flight, but I had, in fact, had concerns when I saw the Thai and Cambodian people entering at the back. They didn't all look like the healthiest lot. Most them also looked a bit spaced out and apprehensive. It did cross my mind that someone had already given them something to keep them quiet and under control.

Over the next couple of weeks in the Philippines, at the larger and more luxurious hotel casino, The Waterfront, in Cebu City, I increasingly got clued into what was going on here, although the extent of it, as it affected me, didn't hit me until the very end. In the meantime, though, I found the entertainment to be done at the Cebu casino was as raunchy at it had been in Poipet and that I was becoming addicted to the attention it gave me and the adulation it afforded my body. There would become a time that men didn't lust after my body. My stint at the casino in Cebu City wasn't that time.

* * * *

The entertainment complex at the Riverfront Cebu City Casino had the backstage area as its hub, with the theaters radiating off it in different directions. For a 3:00 a.m. show, an anything goes raunchy performance, I was on for a solo dance at the smallest of the venues, a room holding no more than a hundred men, standing and packed together, that had a raised runway running out from the backstage hub to a small, circular platform in the center of the room. The platform was big enough for a single performer to stand in the middle of it and not be able to be touched by the hands reaching out over the platform from all sides. I was loaded for "bare"--a gold lamé thong, with a matching halter top. A black mesh athletic T fit snugly over my torso. I had a gold captain's hat on my head and gold wristbands. On my feet were my trustee black-leather boots that I'd worn all the way from Chicago.

Chicago was a long time ago for me. This was no more evident than that now I dipped into the drugs. I regularly smoked the form of pot they grew here in the Philippines, and I'd snorted a line or two of coke more than once, usually to be able to face and open my legs for some ugly, obese Asian businessman after an evening show. And then there were the pills. I didn't always know what was in the pills. I just knew that they gave me a high to give my best in a dance and a strip and a fuck. And on nights like this there were those that gave me an erection that lasted hours and others that protected me from the effects of whatever dicks found their way inside me after--or during--a dance.

The music came up out in the theater, the house lights came down, and the spot lights were trained on where I would make my entrance. The last thing I did before bursting out on the walkway was to let myself be folded into the embrace of the big-dicked Russian stage manager, Slava, a bear of a redheaded, hirsute bull. Our lips locked, and, with that kiss, Slava transferred the pills that would put me up into the stratosphere for this dance. Drugs, of course, were against the law here and loosely monitored at the casino. Sometimes the authorities had someone checking backstage. The pill transfer method was not uncommon, but Slava had established himself as my fuckmaster among those working backstage.