Friends, Lovers, and Masters

"So, we're agreed that one's friends and lovers are two entirely separate groups," Richard Reed said, raising his beer after giving a young man at the table next to us a wink and a smile, which made the young man preen.

"Where, then, would friends with privileges fit?" Noah Goldman asked.

I could clearly see why Noah would ask about that. He was head of sales, also of gladhanding and smiling for the customers. He was a real hunk, of course, spending a lot of his time in the gym and at a hair and makeup salon--which went with the sales territory, I guessed. But I well knew that he was all about benefits for himself while being everyone's friend, but certainly not about commitment. Not that I had ever wanted a commitment from him. I couldn't deny that he wasn't a great cocksman. Friends with benefits defined him well.

The four of us had adjourned to Legends, a local gay bar in the mostly sleepy and conventional town of New Bern on the Neuse River, near the Atlantic Ocean, in North Carolina. We were the department heads--of miniscule departments--of a company, Caligula, that few would realize operated out of this sleepy--one could even say puritanical--southern town. Caligula was a mail order gay male sex supplies business. We operated by Web site and mail-order catalogs, and supplied everything from condoms and lube to sex toys to sexy role-playing cloths, underwear, and swim suits to BDSM equipment. Our building was a nearly windowless warehouse in an industrial area at the corner of Airport Road and a U.S. Highway 70E border auxiliary parallel road, conveniently located from the side of New Bern's Coastal Carolina Regional Airport that the FedEx office was located at and the U.S. Post Office toward the river on Old Cherry Point Road.

The four of us decelerating at Legends after a somewhat contentious management meeting at the office included Richard Reed, head of finance; Zack McKenzie, the fulfillment chief; Noah Goldman, the sales chief; and me, Logan Gibson, head of marketing and advertising. With the possible exception of Richard Reed, who was fairly new to the business and I hadn't figured out yet, we were all gay. That pretty much went with the territory, considering what we provided to the world of gay men. We didn't trumpet this in a town like New Bern, of course, but we had room here to exercise our lifestyle, if not flamboyantly.

Richard Reed had tumbled us into the question of friends and lovers by turning to me and, maybe innocently and maybe not, saying, "Oliver certainly was protective of your assistant, Michael, Logan. I thought the kid was being a little snippy about being called on the hours he keeps. So, are they friends or what? Or maybe lovers?"

He was only beginning to understand the convoluted nature of relationships in the office. Oliver Conover owned and headed up the company. Richard, who was the HR person in addition to doing the finances, had caused the explosion in the management meeting by suggesting that we let Michael go.

Knowing what sort of landmine that would set off, I had interjected myself in the discussion to forestall Oliver's explosion. Michael was, after all, my assistant. Richard should have brought this issue to me first and I would have avoided this unpleasantness.

"Michael's main duties are as a model for our catalogs and Web site displays," I said. "Much of that is done at night. We can't have just anyone representing the company's products in displays."

It was, after all a good point. Michael was young, a ginger, and gorgeous. We hired him for his looks as much as because he was in Oliver's bed, and Oliver could hire whoever he pleased to. He modeled for the early twenties set and I did so for the early thirties look. I well knew I'd also been hired for my looks, and, although I felt I had the business knowledge to do the full job, I had followed the progression from Oliver's bed onto the company payroll in my time as well. For a third model--the rough set look, we used our warehouse man, the partly African-American Jackson Davis, who was a body-builder bruiser type.

The sales chief, Noah Goldman, snorted. "Certainly not friends. Lovers, yes, but not that much friends, I don't think. Michael lives with Oliver. No doubt Michael leads the old man around by the nose. I wouldn't look to getting him fired, Richard."

Having been there before myself, I knew that Oliver was quite dominant--there no one was leading him around by the nose. But it was the fulfillment chief, Zack McKenzie, who was my one close friend in this group, who brought that to the floor.

"Don't make any mistake, guys," he said quietly, looking off toward the bar rather than at any of us, "Oliver is a master, not to be led by anyone." He said that in such a way that I wondered if he had direct knowledge. I did, of course. I had once been a regular in Oliver's bed. I knew he was in charge there. I hadn't had any inkling that Zack had any experience there. I knew he was a submissive, as I was, which was why we'd never be more than friends in this system of relationships we were discussing here at the table. But I'd never heard about anything between him and Oliver. In fact, Oliver had been keeping it out of the office other than with Michael, as far as I knew.

I followed his line of sight over to the bar and saw that our warehouse man, Jackson Davis, a 230-pound, six-foot-four muscular hunk of thuggishness, perpetual surliness, and meanness, had come into Legend and had bellied up to the bar. What was that with Zack, I wondered. Jackson was danger. He was sore temptation for me, challenging my underlying fetish to walk on the wild side, but I was holding off on that as best I could.

"A master," Zack repeated. Then he turned his attention to those of us at the table. "I think there's yet another form of relationship between gay men. There's friendship, pretty much devoid of sexual activity, other than sharing stories. And lovers, sharing it all. And, as noted, somewhere in between there's friends with benefits, sharing stories but also an occasional roll in the hay. But there's a strong third--masters. That would be a sexual relationship, but with one calling all of the shots. More sizzle than friendship or love."

"And maybe a bit on the rough, forbidden side," I couldn't help but mutter. If the other guys heard me, though, no one picked up on it.

"There probably are even more aspects of the relationship," Richard Reed said, standing up from the table. "But it's past time I should be home, so I'll have to fold my cards on this particular discussion."

Richard was married, with children, which was the basic reason we--or at least I--hadn't quite figured out where he fit in this highly gay sexual company.

As we were breaking up, I thought to ask if Zack still wanted me to come over the next day, Saturday, to help him paint his living room. But Zack already was up and headed toward the bar. My immediate reaction was to check where Jackson Davis was and to worry about whether Zack was headed in his direction. On the topic of masters, Jackson was, I thought, much too high octane for the likes of Zack. Zack was sensitive and easily hurt. Jackson would break him, I was afraid. I saw, though, that Jackson was at the beaded curtain-covered doorway to the back rooms, the more intimate areas, of Legends.

Before I could check on whether Zack was following Jackson, I caught the signaling coming from just inside the front entrance. Ward Helmer was standing there. Ward was an insurance broker in the offices that shared the building Caligula was in. He was signaling to me.

The other relationship we had noted but not discussed in depth at the table--that of the lover--was kicking in. I could definitely say that Ward was my lover--the relationship not being deep enough to consider being friends. It was still focused on sexual satisfaction and release and it was too complicated a relationship to be anything like a friendship. And as far as mastering, it was just too equal as yet to be that.

I didn't expect to see Ward there. Like Richard Reed, Ward had a family--a wife and children--to go home to. That was a principal complication of our relationship.

But he was there, at the door, having entered a gay club--almost--and was gesturing to me. I could do no less than to go to him.

Friends, lovers, and masters. All very complicated.

* * * *

"I'm surprised to see you here, Ward," I said as I left Legend--and indeed the man had slipped back out of the entrance door to the club when he knew I'd seen him and was coming to him. And I didn't find him in front of the club. He was down the line of storefronts looking in the front window of an auto supply store. He clearly didn't want to be connected with the club, or, more specifically, with the gay male activity going on inside the club.

"I wanted to see you, Logan," he said. "Mandy has taken the kids and gone to her parents' house in Norfolk. Her dad broke his arm and her mother needs help. I just called her and talked to her mother too. She's really there."

It was over a two-and-a-half-hour drive to Norfolk, Virginia, from here. So, we had at least two hours before Ward, who was really antsy about this arrangement, would start to hyperventilate about maybe Mandy just turning around and driving back in time to find her husband humping me. But I'm sure we wouldn't be doing it at their house anyway, so there was less than no chance she'd catch us in the act.

"So, you want to spend the next two hours fucking," I said. I didn't say it loudly, but I still saw panic in his eyes, and he looked around to see if anyone was eavesdropping on us. And this was the relationship that I'd have to categorize as "lover." There was a stark contrast in how well and fully Ward performed in bed and how much of a complex he had that he was doing it with another man and not exclusively with his wife.

Still, when we were together in bed, he couldn't get enough of me.

Or I of him, I'd have to admit.

"We can't go to my place."

"Of course not," I agreed. "I'll get my car and drive by here. You can wait ten minutes after I've driven past you and we'll go to my place. I'll leave the garage door open and you can stash your car in there." It was an arrangement we'd used before. I had a bungalow on the Neuse River south of town on Johnson Point Road--the river ran through New Bern. I lived alone there. The foliage was heavy. The neighbors weren't nosy or picky and there was little chance Ward visiting there off and on would be noticed, whether or not I had a closed garage to put his car in. But I did. That didn't keep him from being jittery about it all. My place was a ten-minute ride from the office and seventeen minutes, tops, from Legend.

None of Ward's wariness kept him from wanting to fuck me. Once we were inside my house, he was all over me, turning me against the wall beside the door in the kitchen after he'd entered directly from the closed garage. He backed me up against the wall and was all hands and lips, pulling at my clothes, getting to the center of his need and my desire by unzipping us and frotting our cocks together as his other hand--with the help of my hands--got us mostly undressed.

He fucked me the first time right there, on the kitchen table. We hadn't been together for ten days and we both wanted it bad. We weren't rough--we did it as lovers--but we didn't shy away from doing it in unusual places or positions. We were both athletic and body beautiful, having met at the gym where we both spent a lot of our time, got good results from time spent, and were prone to admire the good work of others.

Ward had come on to me. I was a classic submissive. I'd flirt but I'd never take the lead. He didn't tell me he was married and had kids until after the third time we'd fucked. I probably wouldn't have gone with him the first time if he'd been straight with me--and had pretended to be straight. I knew there was something he was holding back, but I had decided that it was another guy. It shouldn't have been any better that it was a guy than that it was a wife and kids, but it was. "Holding something back" didn't mean that he wasn't aggressive in the seduction or dominate in the sack, though.

He fucked me on the kitchen table, both of us still in our shirts, although both were unbuttoned and flapping open, and he still with his tie on. He put me on my back, knelt below me, and ate me out until I was begging for it, and then stood, raised and spread my legs in a V of surrender, and, as I arched my back and head and babbled to the ceiling, my fingers digging into his biceps, gave it to me hard and deep. When he was well saddled, he leaned down into me and French kissed as lovers do.

As skittish as he was about being here, he had no qualms once he was mounted about screwing me royally and totally.

The second hour we spent on my bed, with Ward on his back this time, and me moving around in various positions with his cock up my ass. He was still dominant, telling me what he wanted me to do as I fucked myself on his shaft and me doing whatever he wanted. Afterward it was me crouching over him, cleaning his shaft with my mouth and then him lying there beside me, a finger up my butt, watching me stroke myself off.

For an hour and three quarters it was just the two of us in a world of our own--lovers using what little time we had to connect as one. We murmured to each other as lovers and we moved into positions and gave and took with little need for direction, as long-term lovers will.

I was sure that Ward didn't give any thought to his family at all while we were making love, but, looking out of the bathroom door while he was still on the bed and wasn't aware I saw him, I caught him sitting, naked, body beautiful, on the side of the bed, with his wallet in his hand--the same wallet he'd pulled the two condoms out of that we had used--and looking, with sadness in his eyes, at a photo of his family.

I knew then that, lovers or not, I was not going to win this battle inside him of what relationships were the most important to him. I didn't even think I wanted too. Sex with Ward was good--loving--and when we were in the saddle, we moved with each other like a well-oiled machine, relentlessly building to a mutual ejaculation, but it didn't reach the level of thrill. It wasn't dangerous or taxing--just good, mutually working, get your rocks off sex. I admit that being fucked on the kitchen table had been a little thrilling, though.

As much as I enjoyed having his cock inside me, I knew that we were coming to an end and that it was probably as good for me that we were as for him. I was highly sexed and, happily, I had no trouble attracting men with big cocks.

* * * *

"What is it? It's more than falling down and blackening your eye, isn't it?" I said. I reached over and pulled Zack McKenzie's T-shirt off his back. "Shit, Zack. Who did that to you? Did you go off with Jackson last evening?"

Zack was looking sheepish. I'd come over to his new apartment in downtown New Bern as I'd promised I'd do when we met at Legend with the other department heads the previous evening. I'd been shocked to find him with a black eye when I arrived, but it was more than that. He was walking around gingerly as we were applying masking tape along the baseboards to control the paint lines. Now I knew why. When I pulled his T-shirt over his head, I found his arms and wrists were bruised and, worse, he had welts on his back. I pulled his shorts down in back and I saw them on his buttocks as well.

"You've been bound, haven't you?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And whipped."

"Yes."

"And rough fucked, I'll bet. Was it Jackson?"

"Yes. He's been after me. After our discussions--and the aspects of relationship between guys yesterday, mastering was mentioned. I've been attracted to Jackson. Just scared. I decided that it was a mastering relationship I might want."

"And he mastered you, didn't he?--roughly." I knew Jackson was into that shit. When we did our advertising photos, he was entirely too familiar with the sex torture equipment and in posing with me and Michael with it. I could tell he was into that shit. And he was such a big, muscular dude that I had to admit that I had fantasized about being with him myself. But he was scary.

"And is that what you found you wanted?"

"It was different," Zack said. "And he made me go hard and keep a hard-on. And I came more than once. It was painful, but I've never been turned up that high before."

"Was the torture, though, or the control and the demanding commands good for you?" I asked. "There are more forms of master-slave sex than what Jackson did to you." I was thinking of our boss, Oliver Conover. I'd been with him for a while. He was a master and controlling, but it wasn't the torture crap Jackson was doing. I didn't want to mention him, though. He had Michael Warner, my assistant at work, now. Even if he hadn't, I well knew how complicated it was to be doing it with someone at work. That was an issue with Jackson. I wasn't going to tell Zack he couldn't have a master-slave fuck relationship if he wanted to. I wasn't the boss of him, I didn't want to lose him as a friend, and, as we both were strict submissives, I didn't think there was anything I could do for him to satisfy him sexually. And, worst, he was Jackson's boss at work. If we wanted to talk about complicated, how complicated would it be to be someone's work boss but his sex slave outside work?

As it transpired, though, I was wrong about not being able to do anything to satisfy Zack sexually.

"These welts on your back look painful. And they're on your butt too. How about your thighs?"

"Yes, there too," Zack admitted.

"I don't know how you're able to move."

"I haven't, not very well. I called you to tell you not to come today, but I guess you haven't checked your messages."

"You need to do something about these welts, or they'll get infected."

"I have something to put on them, but I can't reach back there."

"Come into your bedroom. Where's the salve? I'll put it on. Pull out some towels to lay under you on the bed."

"And you'll lay on top of me on the bed?" Zack asked, and then laughed.

As it turned out, it came close to that. I greased him up, sitting close beside him on the bed. He put a hand on my thigh. I knew what he wanted. He'd wanted more than friendship and comradery from me, and I knew it. He had a hard time accepting that I wouldn't put my dick in him--or any other guy. Yes, he was sexy, and, yes, I could get hard with him, but there just wasn't anything we could do about it.

He showed me otherwise, though.

"You're hard," he said, and his hand went there. I didn't move away. "You know I find you sexy. I think I turn you on too. We're good-looking guys. And you can get hard with me. You're hard now."

"But we can't--"

"We can get off together," he said. He turned toward me, cupping the back of my head with one hand and bringing our lips together. The kiss was sweet and became deep. So, yes, there was something we could do. He unzipped me and pulled me out and started stroking me. So, he was right that there was something we could do.

I didn't stop him from masturbating me. He pulled away long enough to shuck his shorts and briefs off. He was hard. He had a very nice cock.

"You can jack me too," he whispered. "We can come together."

I hadn't left my position close at his side, and when he cupped my head and came in for a kiss again, I opened my lips to him. And when he grasped my cock and started stroking me off again, I did the same with his.

We came together. And then later, when we were lying side by side, he on the towels and me on the bedspread, in a sixty-nine position, we gave each other head and managed to come close together again.