Finding Hosea

I climbed out of my dusty old Camaro and walked up to the door of the old bungalow on East Portland Street, just south of I-10, as it cut through downtown Phoenix. The door opened before I knocked on it.

"We don't want any," the young guy, who looked mostly Asian, but dark-skinned enough to be a mix, said, standing in the doorway, trying to block out a view into the house, but being too small and lean to pull that off. He was just in baggy athlete shorts and flip-flops. He looked good--trim, hard-bodied, and lightly muscled, everything in proportion, and the waistband of the shorts dipping to show a line of trimmed, curly pubic hair. He hadn't gotten all of his face makeup off, which identified him as able to play at something else. I knew makeup. I was a stripper in a Las Vegas gay club. I knew what to do with makeup. What I could see of what was left on him indicated he knew how to apply it as well. He just hadn't had a reason to wipe it all off.

"Hi, I'm Miguel Carillo," I introduced myself with a nonthreatening smile. "I'm not selling anything. I'm looking for my cousin, Hosea. He left this address as where he might be. Is he here, please?"

"No Hosea here," the Asian young man said, as he started to close the door in my face. He'd looked me up and down and I got the impression he wanted me out of the picture right fast.

"He's gone. A couple of weeks gone," a voice from behind the Asian guy, delivered from the shadows of the house interior, said. A hand pushed the Asian to the side and I saw a burly, balding guy, maybe in his early forties, sitting in a wheelchair with a fully cast leg propped up in front of him. He too was wearing shorts, but he had a drooping T-shirt on, with a deep neck slit and side slits that revealed the shortfall of hair was only on the head. He had a profusion of curly brown hair falling out of the slits at the neck and sides. He looked thuggish, but he hadn't been in the wheelchair long. He was muscular. His muscles had muscles. He couldn't have been in the cast for long. It hadn't been that long since half his day had gone to developing muscle.

"My, my, ain't you the looker?" he said. The look on the younger Asian guy's face told me why he had wanted me gone quickly.

"Gone?" I asked. "Do you know where?"

We--my extended family and I--hadn't heard from Hosea in Vegas since he'd taken a job from the Internet and left the family some six weeks earlier. We were a closeknit family. Six weeks was a long time without contact. His mother, my aunt, Maria, was worried about him, and, as I had some time off and knew about the job he'd left to take up--and Maria didn't--I volunteered to try to find him.

His mother didn't know he was actively gay. For that matter she didn't know I was actively gay, either. She was from a world that wouldn't know how to handle that. I knew that Hosea had gotten antsy about his short-order cook job in a fancy fusion restaurant and had wanted something more adventuresome. He'd pulled up a gay employment site on the Internet and we'd gone over the listings together. The one he'd applied for and gotten was at this address in Phoenix. It had advertised for a houseboy and companion. Everyone using the site knew what "companion" stood for. After the initial questions were over in site exchanges, this aspect got down to explicit photos and favorite positions.

"No, I don't know where he went. But he left some stuff in his room here. You're welcome to come in and get it to take it to him when you find him. Maybe take a load off and have a cold beer. It's a shittin' hot day today. Come on in. Stand aside and let the boy in, Lek." He'd wheeled to the door, putting the young Asian guy behind him, and was looking me over real well. "Hosea was a good looker, but you put him to shame. You Miguel, are you? I'm Carl. Lek here is Thai."

"Yes, sir, I'm Miguel," I answered. And, so, the other guy's version of Asian was Thai. I never could tell about Asians.

"He told me about you. Birds of a feather, he'd said. Good to see you. Come on in. You've driven all the way from Vegas?"

"Yes, sir." Just what kind of feathers had Miguel been talking about in relation to me, I wondered. Was this guy telling me he knew I was as actively gay as Miguel was?

"Must be really thirsty. Lek, get this man a beer. Me too." He rolled back from the doorway so I could enter, and I did so. The door opened right into a living area to the right and a dining table and chairs to the left. A kitchen ran back behind the dining room. A central hallway moved off straight ahead into the bowels of the house. The furniture was Spartan, but tidy and in good repair.

My gaze went to the Thai houseboy, Lek, as he moved away from me to the kitchen. His back was covered in red welts, some raised areas looking like old wounds but some others looking fresh. The backs of his legs were welted as well. I looked quickly away, disturbed, but not wanting to get into anything that might be going on here. The young man seemed happy enough. Some liked it that way, I knew. When you're a male stripper in Vegas, you've seen it all. I had no idea whether Lek liked it that way or not. There were situations in which I thought I might.

Lek certainly wasn't happy that I was here and getting attention from Carl.

My thoughts went back to Carl and him knowing my name and saying Hosea had told him about me. I wondered how much Hosea had told him. From what I knew of the job, the man must know that Hosea was gay and he probably had been fucking him while Hosea was here, working as the man's houseboy, a job clearly being filled now by the small Asian he'd called Lek. Had Hosea told the man I was gay too, I wondered again--and a stripper in a gay club?

"Hosea told me you were a stripper in a gay club in Vegas," he said. "My name's Carl, by the way," he repeated in case I hadn't picked up on that to begin with.

"Yes, that's right," I said as we settled in the living room with cans of beer Lek delivered. After Lek handed out the beer, Carl grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him into his lap, wrapping his arms around him and telling me that Lek was half Thai and half black American soldier and all sex. Carl's hand went to Lek's crotch and the young Thai relaxed into the big man's lap, looking at me with dreamy "he does me good" eyes. Carl's hand went under Lek's waistband and I could see that he was slow-jacking the small guy inside his shorts. Carl didn't seem to be the least embarrassed that I could see that. But then, he probably was doing it to get my attention, establishing himself as a cocky guy who I'd melt for and want to open my legs for.

"And he said you work for an escort agency and do tricks with men on the side."

"Yes, I said." Damn that Hosea and his big mouth, I thought. But I also thought that, as thuggish as he looked, Carl was a pretty sexy man. I wondered how he'd broken his leg. I also wondered why Hosea left his employment so quickly and where he went. I needed to find out what this man knew about where Hosea had gone from here. Being nice to him and at least pretending he could do me would seem the quickest way to get the information on Hosea I needed.

He was evasive about that and clearly wanted to spin out our conversation and me being here. The looks he was giving me were ones of bald sexual interest. Was he thinking of an afternoon delight, even though he had Lek here on his lap? Apparently so. Was I thinking of an afternoon encounter too? Maybe. Beyond the plan to get information out of this dude, I admit I was horny for him. My mind was already spinning on what positions you took with a guy limited by a cast on his leg.

"What are your going rates for a blow job. Must be pretty expensive in Las Vegas."

I told him.

"Yep, that's way above what we pay here in Phoenix."

"Do you have any idea where Hosea went from here?" I asked, trying to change the thrust of the conversation. Carl wasn't helping. He'd pulled Lek's shorts off and was fondling a naked young man in his lap. Lek was enjoying the workup. He was panting and moving languidly in the man's embrace, making with the "fuck me" eyes.

Carl was looking at me, giving me challenging looks. Would I stay or go? I stayed. "He said something about New Mexico. Maybe there's something he left in the room he was using here that would help with that. As I said, maybe you can check out his things he left and take them with you."

"Maybe?" I asked. When he first mentioned it, there was no maybe. I did want to go through whatever Hosea had left here to maybe find clues to where he is now. It's why I was staying here with this guy making so clear what he'd like to get from me.

"Maybe if you're good to me, you can take whatever of his you want," he amended. "What's the Vegas rate for a fuck from a rent-boy?"

I told him. But I went on to ask why Hosea had left here.

"When he answered my ad, Lek here had done so too," Carl said. "So, I tried them both out. I would have chosen Hosea, but I guess he didn't like to have to compete for the job. He didn't stay long." He fished around in the pocket of his shorts and came up with a wad of cash. "You look like a real honey. You do it for this, and I'll let you go through Hosea's things and take what you want. Watch me do Lek here for a while and then give it to me. Go or stay. It's up to you."

I stayed.

I sat there, across from him in the small living room, and watched him fuck Lek. Carl's shorts buttoned down the sides so that he could get them off easily even with the thick, white plaster cast on his leg. He quickly was as functionally naked as Lek was. He had a big, thick one. I almost hyperventilated to see him stuff that in the hole of the small, slim Thai. But Lek took him and then went into an athletic position, putting his ankles on the Carl's shoulders and pressing the palms of his hands on the floor between Carl's legs. Lek panted and groaned as Carl grasped his waist between his hands and pulled the diminutive Thai on and off his cock. Lek was a player; he knew what to do and how to make it interesting.

I couldn't help myself. I flared my jeans fly open, released what was now a hard erection, and stroked myself while Carl fucked Lek.

"Yeah, right, enjoy yourself while you wait. God, you've got a beautiful body. I'll do you after I'm done with Lek."

Watching me as he fucked Lek, Carl said, "Nice," and I knew he wasn't referring to Lek.

Carl didn't finish with Lek. He pushed him off to the side, growling. "It's getting dark. I think Miguel will be staying for dinner--and longer. Go fix us something." And, as Lek pulled on his shorts and headed for the kitchen, Carl looked at me and said, "Your turn if you want your cousin's stuff and this wad of cash. Come over here and give me head."

I did want Hosea's things and the cash and I responded well to men's sexual commands. I also was in heat. The man was so open about everything and he had a killer body, despite the leg cast. I knelt between the man's thighs and gave him suck. He had a really big dick. And then, like Lek, I sat in Carl's lap and rode his cock. I rode it in reverse of what Lek had, though, facing Carl, my ankles on his shoulders, and my back arching over toward the floor, aiding his pulls on my waist by pushing off the floor with the palms of my hands--the mirror image of how the Thai had taken the cock. I wanted Carl to know I was a player too--and he got the message.

"You're a good little bugger with this," he said as he fucked. With me, Carl filled the bulb of his rubber.

While Lek fixed dinner, Carl showed me back to the room Hosea had slept in. "You can stay the night, or longer, if you want," he said. "Maybe you want to apply for the houseboy job. I'm getting tired of Thai food."

Maybe not, I thought. What I found in the room surprised me. Hosea didn't have a whole lot of stuff in this world and there was enough in this room that I don't know all of what he took with him when he left. Clothes enough were here and even the duffel bag and backpack I'd seen him off with in Vegas. Strange. Why didn't he take his stuff with him, I wondered.

Going through the nightstand drawers, I found a slip of paper with a name on it, Hayden Nichelson, and a file number that looked to me like it was from the gay employment Internet site Hosea had used to get this job. I pulled the site up on my cellphone--I'd joined the site myself, so there wasn't any problem checking on the number. Sure enough, the file was for a Hayden Nichelson, with a Flagstaff, Arizona, address. He was a pretty good-looking dude for his age--probably mid-to-late forties. He looked pretty sexy in his "baring all" photo. The cock shot revealed a championship piece. He was advertising for a houseboy, companion, and proofreader, claiming he was a novelist. So, that was a place to start.

Looking out of the window, I saw that it was a little late to start today and probably too late to start looking for a place to stay for the night. I'd have to take Carl up on his offer to stay here, in what was Hosea's bed. I suppose that might require some more sex with Carl, but he'd fucked me once already and had done it well. I had nothing to pretend or protect at this point.

Lek was ringing a bell, which I took as an announcement for dinner. I took one more look around the room and indulged in one more internal questioning of why Hosea had taken so little of what he owned with him when he left here--and why did he stay on this job for such a short time?

Then I dragged myself down the hall toward the living areas. There were at least three bedrooms and a bathroom off this hall. I wondered if Lek was in one of the smaller bedrooms or whether he bunked with Carl. It didn't seem like Hosea had been denied his own bedroom while he was here.

Carl said he was tired of Thai food, but I hoped Lek had made some for dinner. I hadn't had Thai food for a while and I liked it.

* * * *

That was the night the nightmare first visited me, not in its full-blown variation, but recognizable as the same one that would haunt me again.

Shortly after I went to bed in the room Hosea had occupied, Carl visited me to, he said, "Collect the room rent for the night." I didn't fight him as he wheeled himself into the room and dragged himself up onto the bed. I didn't help him in this, but I didn't fight him either. I'd admitted that I was a rent-boy and he'd already fucked me, so there didn't seem to be any reason to pretend I was virginal--or to demand he pay me in these circumstances. Sex is a renewable resource. Nobody knows that better than a rent-boy.

I lay there on my back, helping him position himself between my legs a bit by stuffing a pillow under the small of my back to raise my pelvis. And I spread and bent my legs so that he could lay between them comfortably enough in his leg cast, his hands grasping my hips, which rocked against his face and I moaned, as he sucked my cock and balls and then moved his tongue to my hole. I certainly couldn't say I was resisting him; I gave him every help in getting into place.

He didn't have to ask me to let him fuck me after giving me this attention. I was begging him for the cock, and pulling at his biceps to help drag him fully on top of me. Giving a small laugh of victory, he did so, his cast not helping but not getting much in the way, either, and pulled himself up my body. I clutched his buttocks to pull him up and then moved my hands between our bellies and held him erect as he moved into position. I gave a little yelp when he entered me, strongly, confidently, and started to pump me. He knew what he was doing; he had plenty of experience. One of my hands remained between our bellies and stroked my cock, while the other one grasped one of his biceps tightly. His hands went to my throat and he cruelly controlled my breathing to the rhythm of his pumping. There was no evidence I wasn't fully accepting the fuck.

So constricting was his breath control that I blacked out during the fuck and that was when the nightmare visited me.

In the dream I segued into being on the bed, with someone heavy on top of me, controlling my breathing both with hands gripping my throat and with the sheer weight of his body on top of me. He was deep inside me, deeper than any man had gone before. Everything was in a hazy swirl, as it generally was with dreams. A disembodied voice was repeatedly crying out "Beware. Leave. Escape." I turned my head and my gaze went to uneven floor boards in the room, boards that had been taken up and not fully put back in place before. "No don't look!" the voice cried out. And then another voice, a younger voice, was crying out in pain-pleasure.

Was it my voice? I was being fucked good. I had a big-cocked man between my thighs and we were moving together well in the rhythm of the fuck. In the dark, it didn't matter how old he was or how good looking. He was muscular and big cocked and good in the rhythm of the fuck. I could feel the deep penetration of the cock and the stretching thickness of it, but not any sensation other than that. That helped me realize it was a dream. I certainly was feeling the sensation of Carl's cock working inside me before I had blacked out.

The cries of pain-passion became more pronounced and more ominous as I swam back into consciousness. When I was fully awake, I found I was alone on the bed, on top of the sheets, still panting and moaning. The cries that had intruded in my dream and had awakened me were still there, real, and there was the sound of rhythm thumping against a wall somewhere.

I rolled off the bed and padded out into the corridor. The sound was more pronounced here and the thudding was against a wall onto the corridor from behind where the kitchen was. I went out into the living area and into the kitchen. There was a door there into someplace behind the kitchen. From the feel of the wall in the bedroom corridor, I determined that there was a room there, behind the kitchen, that was the same size as the bedrooms further down the corridor. A fourth bedroom, but opening off the kitchen rather than the bedroom corridor? Maybe a servant's room, but this house wasn't fancy enough to have a servant's room.

The cries had stopped but the thudding against the wall continued. I tried the door, but it was locked. On the way back to my bedroom, I checked the two bedrooms other than the one I had been sleeping in. Both were empty. Neither Carl nor Lek were in either of the two beds in those rooms. I had zonked out before Carl was finished and he'd moved on to Lek, fucking him somewhere in the house behind a closed door. I dragged myself back to my bed and fell instantly into a deep sleep.

The next morning I couldn't even be sure that anything other than the nightmare had happened the night before. I was sore down there, so I did assume that Carl had fucked me--and that I had not only let him but had wanted him to do it. He was a muscular, hung man. Other than the cruel breath control play, he was all I wanted in a man--at least in the dark.

I looked to the floor of the room without really understanding why I wanted to do so--and to a particular area. It was covered with a throw rug, though, and I just shrugged the cobwebs out of my brain, pulled on briefs, and went out to the living area.

An exclaimed "Fuck!" told me where to go. Carl was in the kitchen, working, not too efficiently, at making himself breakfast from his wheelchair. He was just in briefs. He saw me and said, "Shit, I can't reach everything I need. Help me. Start showing your houseboy skills."

"Wheel into the dining room. I'll take over from here," I said. And, as he did so, I asked. "Where's Lek? Doesn't he fix your meals?"

"Lek's gone. Left last night," Carl said.

Now that sounded peculiar, but I made him an omelet, which he obviously liked, because he said, "Shit, that was a good one. And it wasn't Thai food. How about you staying and being my houseboy?"