Fool’s Contract

"The conditions?" He had Clay's full attention now.

"Yes. I would like to continue covering you . . . and I, of course, would be generous, but I won't pay you directly for sex anymore. It would have to be because we both want sexual satisfaction from each other."

"Oh?" Clay raised his eyebrows.

"It is sexual satisfaction for me, of course. What about you? Are you just lying down for me for the money? You don't really need the money, do you? I sense that what arouses you is the free well of the act—not the taking of money for it or the coercion by another man into doing it."

"No, I don't need the money. Yes, the thrill of it is the free will part. I didn't come here with you for the money. But how did you know?"

"The name 'Long' and the look of you. The clue was when you said you were traveling in Europe after college—that you went to college at all. Harvard?"

"Yes, Harvard."

"You are of the Boston Longs, aren't you? You are the spitting image of Coleridge Long. He is a handsome devil too."

"Yes, I am one of those Longs. From the black sheep side, as you no doubt have discerned."

"Not so deeply black. I could say a thing or two about Coleridge's past. I would say more that you were following in his footsteps. I wish to lay you again—to do so regularly—but only because you want me to—not because I am paying for it. Tonight we can talk about arrangements for assignations. But I have discerned from our discussions that you have some sort of understanding with Mark Stewart as well, an uneasy one."

"You mentioned that you didn't think I liked to be coerced. That was discerning of you. I don't. Mark Stewart coerces me, though. He threatens to expose me to society unless I lie under him. And he is a cruel, demanding lover."

"Well, if you avail yourself of that key, we will see what we can do about that as well."

Clay put his hand over the key, and Hamilton covered Clay's hand with his.

* * * *

Wednesday, 1 April 1903, Newport, Rhode Island

"I don't know why I came—why I come when you summon me."

Clayton had been surprised when the summons came to him at the marble palace the Chamberlains had built in Newport, a peninsula in Rhode Island where all of the New York elite seemed to be building summer homes. Most, like the Chamberlains' Fontwell, were being rendered in marble in European palace style. Fontwell had been completed the fall before off Bellevue Avenue between the Vanderbilts' Marble House, finished ten years earlier, and Rosecliff, the mansion of the Nevada silver heiress Theresa Fair Oelrichs, which had been completed just months before Fontwell was finished.

It was only this spring that the Chamberlains had come to Newport to move in and Hamilton was marking that with an April Fool's Day house party featuring magician acts. Clayton, of course, had been impressed when Hamilton had told him it was all designed so that the two of them could be together in the countryside, beyond the walls of the Pierrepont. Hamilton's wife had already left for a summer in Paris. Clayton was performing one of the acts and was staying at the house, conveniently situated for Hamilton and him to find each other for private sessions as they were able.

What Clayton only later learned was that his former mentor and tormentor, Marco the Great, Mark Stewart, had also been invited to perform, although he wasn't being accommodated at Fontwell. Clayton was a little miffed at Hamilton for that invitation. It showed insensitivity to Clayton's aversion to the other magician who controlled and manipulated him.

It was upon answering the summons from Stewart that Clayton found the man in a Victorian guest house in Portsmouth, the less fashionable area of the peninsula to the north of the Newport mansion district.

"We have a contract that you will respond when I call," Mark answered, as he stood just inside the guest room where Clayton had come to him. He was giving Clayton a possessive sneer and was unbuttoning the fly of his trousers. "I pulled you out of the brothel in Tangier and taught you enough magician tricks to put you back on your feet. I only contracted for one thing in return—that you come to me when I call and go on your knees to me. In Tangier you were more than willing to do that. You begged for it."

"It was a fool's contract," Clayton said, "enforced by blackmail and coercion."

"You are fooling yourself on that, my boy," Mark said. "You know you can't get enough of what I have to give. On your knees, boy. But first strip down. I like you to be naked. You are a beautiful, arousing young man."

With a sigh, Clayton disrobed and then went down on his knees before the master magician, took the man's cock in his mouth, and dutifully began giving him deep head. Stewart took Clayton's head between his hands and guided the young man in his servicing, increasingly subjecting him to cruelty by thrusting deep and holding Clayton's head captive even as the young man gagged and tried to pull away from the thrusts. Stewart made sure that Clayton took it all, to the root.

Clayton had tears in his eyes and was groaning softly, when Stewart released his head, only to reach down, pull him up by his armpits, turn him, and push him belly down on the bed. Clayton bent over onto the bed, arms stretched out above his head, fingers digging into the cheap chenille bedspread, and mouth yawning open in a silent scream, as the magician mounted his buttocks, thrust inside him, riding him high and hard, and fucked him to an ejaculation. Stewart wasn't unusually long or thick, but before he mounted Clayton, he strapped the young man's thighs closed with a belt, restricting Clayton's channel, and gave him no time to adjust to the penetration of the cock. Clayton moaned and groaned, as the man thrust hard and deep in his unprepared passage. Clayton's own belt was being put to use—Stewart was strapping the young man's buttocks, thighs, and back with it as he fucked him.

* * * *

Clayton had managed to get through his performance that evening, presented in the ballroom at Fontwell, which had a raised stage area at one end, complete with proscenium, red brocade curtains, and access from each side to support rooms and corridors leading to the rest of the mansion. He was moving delicately, as Mark Stewart had lost control that afternoon and laid hard into him with the strap, raising welts on his thighs, buttocks, and back. When Clayton returned to the mansion on Bellevue Avenue, Hamilton met him in an upstairs corridor and signaled that the two should meet in Clayton's room. Clayton went there and when Hamilton arrived, they kissed, and Clayton was kneeling between Hamilton's spread knees as the older man sat on the side of the bed and was starting to service the man's cock. As Clayton gave him head, Hamilton pulled the shirt off Clayton's back.

"What are these? What has happened? Who did this?" Hamilton asked, in shock.

"Mark Stewart," Clayton asked.

"Here. Stop that and sit up here on the bed. I'll be back in a few minutes." Hamilton stood.

"But we were . . . you wanted . . ."

"I'll not take advantage of you when you are wounded like this," Hamilton said. He left the room and came back with salve and bandages.

"When did Stewart do this?" he asked as he was dressing the wounds. "He's not staying at the house."

"He called me to him." What Clayton really wanted to do was to ask Hamilton why he'd brought Stewart here in the first place—but he didn't. He didn't want to fight with Hamilton.

"And you went?"

"Yes. He has a hold over me—a written contract and the threat of exposure to my family."

"Believe me, your father won't keel over dead to know that you're doing what he once did himself. You can't go on like this."

"I don't intend to."

"What does that mean?" Hamilton asked.

"I'm going to stop this," Clayton answered, his face set in a grimace from the older man's ministrations.

"Don't do anything rash. Just stay away from him this evening. I'll see that there is no more contact while you are here under my roof, and he'll be gone tomorrow. I brought him here for a reason."

So, Clayton went through with his magic act performance, with his dressing room and props being kept on one side of the stage and Marco the Great's on the other side. After he'd left the stage, though, with another act set between his and Stewart's, Clayton went back to his room, drew a pistol out from where he'd hidden it after buying it and bullets after leaving Mark Stewart's guest house, and returned to the wings of the stage as the act before Marco the Great's was to begin.

It was there, at the back edge of the brocade stage curtain that Hamilton Chamberlain found Clayton, came up behind him, reached around him, and took the pistol from him. Quaking, Clayton leaned back into Hamilton's chest.

"You wouldn't really do this, would you?" Hamilton whispered. "I don't know what I would do now without you. This man isn't worth it. And this is needless anyway."

"Why? What do you mean?" Clayton asked.

"I had a purpose for contracting Stewart for this performance," Hamilton said, "although, in the end, I had to use you for bait to get to him to agree to come here. I just didn't plan on him being able to get to you."

"Something has to be done," Clayton said. "I can't take any more of him."

"Nor do you have to," Hamilton said. "I've made my own contract with him now. The fool's contract now is his, not yours."

"I don't see—"

"I've paid him a large sum to go on tour—in Argentina."

"But he still could—"

"Argentina is very far from here and it can be, I understand, a very dangerous place—sort of like our own Wild West. Who knows what might happen to Stewart there? Let's just let this spin out and see what happens, shall we? We can let Mark Stewart be the fool here."

Clayton shuddered and pulled closer into Hamilton's chest. He felt very protected and much less the fool.