Friends, Lovers, and Masters

So, he was right. We could have sex without penetration.

"It's sad," he said, when I readjusted to be stretched beside him, face to face, him on his side, facing me, to save his back, buttocks, and thigh backs.

"What's sad?" I asked.

"According to our discussion yesterday, we can't be friends anymore. True friends wouldn't do this. And if we are lovers now, the relationship will be too sensitive and complicated for us to be friends. That sort of makes me sad. I've enjoyed having you as a friend."

"We set a corollary on that, I think," I answered. "We can be friends with privileges. I think it would be too frustrating to think of ourselves as lovers if we can't do it all."

"You can do it all to me if you want," Zack said.

"Alas, this was nice, but, no, I don't think I can do that with a guy. And this isn't enough for you, is it?"

"Not if it's all there is."

"You're still thinking of how high being mastered took you, aren't you--despite all of the damage Jackson did?"

"I went higher, higher than ever before. I came--again and again."

"There are forms of mastering that aren't as extreme as Jackson," I whispered. "Maybe you'll have a chance to try them out."

"Maybe," he answered. "How about you? I've seen you look at Jackson before. I think that's what made me give him a look--and make him notice me. Could you see yourself giving Jackson what he'd want from you--what I think he does want from you?"

"No, never," I said. But that was a lie. I've thought about Jackson and going under him, even knowing what he wanted, all too often. But maybe if I kept saying no to myself--and then to Jackson if he ever directly approached me--the no would stick.

"Friends with privileges," Zack murmured. "Yes, that will be nice."

But still not that wise to do with someone you work with, I thought.

* * * *

A few days later I discovered yet another category in male-to-male relationships--acquaintances with privileges. This would be an "answering the call to need" sexual hookup when your partner isn't really a friend. In discovering this category I also was breaching the "keep it away from work" advice.

Most of us in the Caligula company were gay, and actively so. Most of us were good-looking and had great bodies too--that was something the owner, Oliver Conover, quite evidently took into account when he hired. His previous sex partner--me--and his current one, Michael Warner, my assistant, who were the principal models for the Caligula catalogue and Web site, were probably the best looking. The other man used as a model, the half-breed Jackson McKenzie, wasn't a handsome man. He was more of a glowering, tattooed thug. But he was body gorgeous and was of a type we wanted to convey in our advertising. He didn't qualify as one of the beautiful people in the office, though.

Above all of the rest of us in sexy and hunky, I'd have to admit, was Noah Goldman. In office terms, that was natural. Noah was the head of sales. His job was to sell gay male sex paraphernalia to guys. He did that by sex appeal and charisma--and by handling distributors, who tended to be activity gay, just the way they liked to be handled. That the height of arrogance didn't shave the effect of charisma was beyond me, but I guess in short-term relationships--selling it--it didn't come out as much as it did inside the office where the rest of us had to suffer it.

So, as hunky as he was--and as much as he was an aggressive top with most everything in sexy terms favoring him--I found him insufferable.

So, why did I go with him and occasionally let him fuck me in an "acquaintance with privileges" arrangement? I guess I'd write it up to need for immediate attention--mine--and opportunity--ours. It was also a visual thing--beautiful bodies moving in intimate consort. We videoed it and I, at least, got off on it later as well as during. In terms of opportunity, both of us were fishermen. Love of river fishing had let me to settle in New Bern on the Neuse River and to buy a house on the water. It also made me lower my defenses to Noah occasionally, because he, of all the guys I came into contact with regularly, was a knowledgeable and avid fisherman.

Not more than a week after my relationship with Zack McKenzie turned from friendship to friends with privileges, albeit falling short of the anal fuck I itched for, I was out in the deep part of the Neuse River before it dumped into the Atlantic, in just an oversized rowboat with outboard motor, with Noah Goldman, working on catching the bluefish and Spanish mackerel we were told were running high out here. Noah had made it quite obvious he was randy as we were preparing the boat to push off from the dock at my Johnson Point Road bungalow--not just in looks but in innuendo he was dropping and the touching he was doing. He wasn't the only one randy, though. I was in heat to have a man inside me.

Noah could tell I was and that only cause him to push the issue. I wasn't attracted to anything about Noah, however, except for his hard body and talented cock, so we set out on the river with me determined to concentrate on the fishing.

I was the one who got reeled in.

"Hey, Logan, we've done a good catch. I say we take a break."

I had been taking a bluefish off my line in the stern of the boat and looked up. Noah was lying back into the bow of the boat, legs spread. We both were shirtless. He had unzipped and flared his shorts and had his cock, hard, out in his hand and was stroking. God he was a god, was my thought. And so sure of himself and cocky, which was the only barrier to my going down on my knees between his spread thighs and taking me into my mouth.

"Knock it off, Noah. I didn't come out here for that."

"Yes, you did. You've been antsy for me since I arrived at your place. You were only quick to take up my suggestion we go fishing today because you wanted my cock."

"Bullshit," I said.

"Come here. Take this in your mouth and work me up. Then I'll give you what we both know you want."

"Shit. Fuck," I muttered, but it came out as a plaintive groan as I went to him, went down on my belly in the hull of the boat between his knees, and took his cock in my mouth.

Shortly afterward, we'd exchanged places, me wedged into the bow, my back reclining into it and my ankles on Noah's shoulders after he'd sucked me off and eaten out my ass, grasped and squeezed my butt cheeks open, mounted and penetrated me, and started the deep-channel fuck. With me groaning and digging my fingernails into his biceps as he dipped his face down to mine, captured my lips with his, and made me his slave, Noah fucked me hard and deep.

I hated the man. I hated that I gave in to him so easily. I loved what he was doing to me with his shaft.

Yet another form of relationship between men: an acquaintance with privileges.

* * * *

We were filming for the Web site store and the fall catalog in the back warehouse room that was set up as a sexual torture chamber after hours some days later. Michael Warner and I had been modeling some clothes and James Hummel, who worked distribution under Jack McKenzie and also did our camera work, had finished with those photos. We expected Jackson Davis to come in to do some posing with us on the machinery.

I was nervous and quite antsy, because Jackson and Noah Goldman, in charge of sales, had come to me with a proposition that afternoon. They'd picked their time right, as I had gotten bad news on my truck from the garage the day before. It was time for a new truck, but my finances didn't agree. Jackson and Noah had relief to offer. I had suspected something like this was going on--at least by Jackson--but I hadn't really given thought to what I would say if they came to me with an offer.

Michael was taking more photos with Jackson on the equipment that we were using for the Web site and the catalog. Jackson and Noah had a private subscription Web site going where Jackson and Michael, and occasionally Noah and guys he brought in, used the equipment in acts that went well beyond simulation. James videoed them.

Noah wanted me to do some sex videos. They would pay well. I needed the money.

And it wasn't just the money that was attracting me to this now. It was the mastering. We had discussed this sometime before. I had gotten the lover relationship without full satisfaction and had seen friendship turn into friendship with privileges with Zack without being full satiated. Although acquaintances with privileges that I had with Noah had gotten me off, it left a sour taste in my mouth of needing sex from a guy I didn't particularly even like. Ever since I'd had to help put Zack back together after a mastery session with Jackson, I'd fantasized about a mastery relationship--and about Jackson, in particular. I was sturdier stuff than Zack was. I was sure I could go further with Jackson.

The guys were giving me a chance to try that out--and they were going to pay me as well. The offer had come right when I needed extra cash. The decision wasn't too hard to make.

Noah arrived after the catalog shoot and he was filmed with Michael first. As the shoot moved into sex acts using the equipment, we all put on Mardi Gras-type fancy and colorful masks. Otherwise, we were naked. But most using the video service wouldn't know who we really were.

We had a piece of equipment called a banc de prière, a prayer bench, where one knelt before a wooden frame to support the forearms while in prolonged prayer. The sexual device version of this had stocks on the top edge of the frame. Michael's head and wrists were trapped in the stocks and his knees were lashed in place to the frame. For the filming, Noah used a riding crop and pencil-like device with a circle of spikes that rolled at the tip that he rolled around Michael's body between short sessions of flicking the riding crop on him to work Michael up. Then Noah mounted him, like Michael was a mare, and rode his ass, continuing to strike him on the flanks with the riding crop. The shape of Michael's mask resembled the head of a horse.

When Noah had fucked Michael, Jackson, who had left the room, reentered. He came back in all leathered up, as he had left. Tight leather pants, with an ultralow rise and a codpiece. He wore black leather boots, a black leather harness on his massive, swarthy chest, and a black leather bicker's hat. His mask was that of a devil. I didn't have to be told he'd be a devil.

But I knew he'd be a master, and that's what I'd been telling myself I needed--that I had to try out to know how it fit in as a relationship and whether it was something I wanted, something that would give me more satisfaction than I was now getting.

My mask was more in keeping with Mardi Gras than the others--a grinning face with green and white and purple swirls, with feathers. Noah and Michael left the room. As Michael was breezing by, he paused at where I was standing, nervous, not being sure of doing this. He whispered in my ear, "Zack's a friend of yours. Tell him I know what he's doing... what he's doing with Oliver. I know and I'll make life hell for him if he doesn't leave Oliver alone." Then he was gone.

I wanted to laugh. Oliver had displaced me with Oliver, the company's owner--a real master in sex, but just in a forceful, not a rough, way. I didn't care if Zack displaced Michael with Oliver. I was just glad that Zack had found a master--a master who wasn't Jackson. Zack was too delicate and sensitive to be mastered in the way Jackson did it.

The question was whether I was too weak to be mastered in the way Jackson did it.

And then Jackson did it.

Noah returned to the room, without Michael, as Noah was hooking me up to another apparatus. The cameraman, James, loaded up two video cameras and gave one to Noah.

The apparatus was basically just two leads suspended from the ceiling with wrist constraints that stretched my two arms out. There was a padded bar at belly height that pressed into my belly. There were restraints at either end of the bar, but those didn't come into use until later in the session. I was standing in a crouch, belly over this bar, and my arms stretched out, when the cameras started and Jackson came in behind me, his codpiece flapping open and his erection showing. I was naked other than the mask.

I trembled and jerked a bit when he was swishing the thongs of the black leather hand whip he had on my back, buttock, and thighs. He was giving me time to build up apprehension of what was to come. I half believed it would be nothing painful, that it would all be to fool the camera. I started to pant and bit and let out a moan when the swishing became flicking.

Then the pain became real. I cried out at the initial strike, more in surprise than pain, with the knowledge Jackson was actually going to whip me. And then, crying out and jerking and writhing, the pain came, pain mixed, to my surprise and slight embarrassment, but pleasure too and arousal. I went hard. Jackson struck me again and again and again, as James and Noah moved around me, keeping each other out of camera angle, but showing me being beaten from various positions. They made sure that they got shots of my erection, proof of acquiescence to this.

Jackson dropped the hand whip and I felt my legs being lifted now at each side and restrained at the end of the bar. He came close in behind me, moving his hands around to palm my belly on either side. And then I was panting and writhing and groaning again as he worked his thick, long cock inside me from the rear and fucked me.

As the fucking continued, he grasped my cock in one hand and stroked me off. We came close together, all of it caught on tape as Noah and James moved around us and the cameras whirred.

And, so that was what the male-to-male relationship of mastery in the extreme was.

When I had been freed and was able, I fled the room and the building as fast as I could, barely taking the time to pull my clothes on. I said nothing to either Jackson or Noah. Noah was acting like nothing had happened. Jackson just stood there, hands on hips, dripping cock swinging from his open codpiece and saying, "Gotcha at last."

* * * *

"Was it Jackson?"

"Yes."

I was stretched on my belly on my bed in my bungalow on the river, and Zack McKenzie, sitting beside me, was applying salve to the welts on my back, butt, and legs. They hurt more now than they did while Jackson was whipping me. But then, there was arousal and a form of pleasure and satisfaction then that there wasn't now, although I already was planning how this was going to segue into a mutual jack-off session.

"He bound you and whipped you and fucked you?"

"Yes."

"You won't want to do that again."

"No," I answered, knowing even when I said it that it was a lie. Of all of the male-on-male relationships I'd discussed with the guys or added in my own thoughts, the one of mastery--Jackson's form of rough-handling master-slave relationship, was the one that had aroused me the most and had given me the most sexual satisfaction. I could say I wouldn't do it again, but Jackson had established himself as my master. If he summoned me, I'd go to him again.

"Tell me, Zack. When you went to him and he mastered you, did he have you make a film with him too--to put on a subscription Web site?"

"Yes. He was so commanding that I didn't say no, even for that," Zack said. "I'll never to do that again, though--not the filming."

I knew I would. That was exciting and quite satisfying too.