Matchmaking

"This gentleman would like to see the special collection," Gabriel said. "There's someone up at the front desk who wants to buy. Could you see to this gentleman's needs?"

Kurt Chase had been on a ladder shelving books high in a case midway down the depth of the Hanson Street Bookstore in the old town of Easton, Maryland. The corridor narrowed here midway down the depth of the bookstore, with rooms on either side before opening up again in the back. It was a traditional-style bookstore, with wooden bookcases set against wood-paneled walls, white- and black-checked tiles on the floor, and soft classical music in the background. Looking down from the ladder, Kurt focused on the man his older partner, Gabriel, had brought to him for the first time. Suddenly seeing him like this almost made Kurt swallow his tongue. He always assessed men as possible sex partners and even more so of late as his sex time with the fifty-eight-year-old Gabriel Lockwood had been tapering off. At twenty-seven, Kurt was at the height of his sexual needs.

This man was gorgeous in the way Kurt liked the best: he was dark--East European or Arabic?--handsome in a rugged, dangerous sort of way, and heavily muscled. Beyond that he already was carrying a book on sailboat construction. Kurt was very much into sailboats. He had one at the Miles River-shore house he and Gabriel shared.

"The special section is just over there," Kurt said, looking around the store to make sure there weren't any customers watching. "I'm sure you realize that in a small historical town like this, we keep the existence of this collection on a close-hold basis," He said.

The Mideastern man smiled. "Yes, I'm surprised you have such books on offer at all" he said.

"The truth is that these are what keeps the bookstore afloat," Kurt said. "Men come from the three surrounding states just to see this collection. Most of such offerings are in e-books. But there still are people who want the visceral enjoyment of turning pages and appreciate these for their collection value."

"I'm more curious about the collection itself--and those who would maintain one," the man answered, giving Kurt a look that indicated that he was interested in other men as well--and had a definite interest in Kurt. "Where I live is not a good place to collect books."

"Alas, that's the way it is with most men," Kurt said. "That's why the e-book revolution caused a burgeoning of offerings in this book category. The books could be kept in secret files on computers. They didn't have to be put on bookcases or discarded."

Kurt stumbled coming down off the ladder and the man caught him, holding him perhaps a couple of seconds longer than he needed to before releasing him on his feet on the floor. Both men looked flustered.

"The door to the special collections room is just across, over here," Kurt said.

"Where?" the man asked, not seeing anything but bookcase. But Kurt reached over and pushed a button on the side of the frame of a bookcase in the corridor between the shop's two main rooms, and the case opened to show that the space across from the office in the center of the shop was another bookroom.

"Ah, clever. Another display room," the man said, surprised.

"Yes, but not just any display room," Kurt answered, gesturing for the men to enter and then closing the door behind them. This side of the door was a bookcase as well. Books were displayed on the shelves, but there were DVDs and photo collections as well. There also was a collection of sex toys. The man picked a glass dildo up and ran his fingers over it as he walked around the perimeter of the room. His attention went from a book here and there and back to Kurt.

"I hardly know what to look for," he said. "It seems extra taboo to have an actual paperback of a gay male novel in hand. I think I'd like to buy one. But I don't know what to buy. Perhaps you could give me a recommendation. Or aren't you?"

"What do you like to read in general. The sex part would just be an add on to what you already like to read. Scifi? Extreme BDSM? Gay Romance? Historical?"

"Historical, I think. But beyond that..."

"You've already picked out a book on sailboat construction. Do you like nautical books?"

"Yes, I guess I do."

"Here's one you might enjoy, then," Kurt said, picking up a copy of the novel Shores of Tripoli, with a setting of the Barbary Coast pirates of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Mediterranean, which the United States fought during Thomas Jefferson's presidency. "This combines sailing and history. It's by an author, Dirk Hessian, who specializes in gay male historicals. Have you heard of him?"

"A pen name for the prolificate novelist, habu, isn't he?" the man said. "Yes, I have heard of him. And, yes, I'll take that one then."

The bookcase door opened at that point, and Gabriel was standing there with another customer--a middle-aged man, on the hefty side, who could be anything from a banker to a high school principal. In an case, the man was a bit nervous about being there, but he wanted to be in that section of the bookstore badly enough to tough it out.

"Perhaps you can show this gentleman around the special collection, Kurt." Then, seeing that the man Kurt already was helping had a copy of Shores of Tripoli in hand already, he said. "I see you've found a book. One of our bestsellers. If you have, I'll be happy to ring you up."

And with that, the man was moving to the front of the store with Gabriel, and Kurt had someone entirely different--a rather skittish customer--who needed to be introduced to the collection.

When Kurt had shown the new customer around and disengaged as quickly as he could to come to the front of the store, Gabriel was alone at the cash register.

"He's gone," Kurt remarked.

"Who? Oh, yes, the Turkish hunk. Yes, he's gone. Quite good looking, wasn't he?"

"How do you know he was Turkish? Did you get his name? Did he use a credit card?"

"I was born in the Levant," Gabriel said. "I can tell a Turk from a Greek or Syrian. He paid cash. I didn't get a name. Why, did he particularly arouse you?"

"No. I was just curious what nationality he was," Kurt said. Gabriel wasn't normally the jealous type. But Gabriel had been quite strange of late and their sex life had taken a dive. The used to be able to talk openly about other men who aroused them, but Kurt wasn't sure Gabriel's mood of late welcomed that.

But, yes, the Turk had aroused him sexually. Gabriel hadn't been giving it to him--at least not all the way--for months. It wasn't hard for Kurt to be aroused by another man. He was in heat and was frustrated.

And, yes, the Turk had been a hunk and a half. He also was conversant with modern gay novels. He must be a player.

* * * *

For five years Kurt Chase and Gabriel Lockwood had shared an early nineteenth-century, three-story wood saltbox mansion facing and on the shore of the Miles River about a fifteen-minute drive from the Easton bookstore toward St. Michaels, near where the river entered the Chesapeake Bay. The three-story portion of the house faced the water. The house and grounds had been well-maintained for two hundred years and wings and dependencies had been added as current comfort needs dictated. Kurt's twenty-foot sailboat, the love of the young man's life, was docked right in front of the house.

The interest in sailboats is what had brought the two together. Whereas the bookstore in Easton was Kurt's business interest, Gabriel owned a sailboat repair yard on the banks of the Miles River on the other side of St. Michaels. They had been living just a few miles apart on the shore of the Miles when they met in New York at a sailboat convention. They found each other compatible, the vast age difference not being an issue with them and Gabriel being a top and Kurt a submissive. What started as an intended one-night stand in New York spun out to cohabitation on the banks of the Miles River, which had proved an amicable and compatible relationship.

Issues had begun to creep in only recently. Kurt was highly sexed and desired frequent laying. Gabriel had had no trouble accommodating this until recent months, when he'd started to tire short of mutual anal-sex lift off. The change had been so pronounced that Kurt was afraid that Gabriel had found someone else to fuck and that their arrangement was just not working anymore.

It was thus that later that night as they lay beside each other on the master bedroom bed in the Miles River colonial mansion in the exclusive Arcadia Shores area and Kurt was listening to Gabriel, turned from him on the bed, snore, that Kurt was going over their assets. After five years, what was his, what was Gabriel's, and what had been acquired by both of them and thus would need to be split?

Kurt didn't want a split. Gabriel had almost completely satisfied him in sex and fully so as a companion and a work partner for five years. And, as an older man just delighted that a young honey like Kurt would accept him, Gabriel had always been understanding and tolerant of the times Kurt had gone with other men for variety and a short, meaningless fling.

He really couldn't complain about tonight. Gabriel had made sure that Kurt had gotten off. It just hadn't been full anal sex. They had cuddled and drunk wine, discussing the day's activities and the customers who had come to the bookstore, and were sitting in Anderondek chairs on the bank of the river and watching the sunset. Then after a steak dinner prepared by Gabriel, the older man had recognized that the younger one was in heat, and had slowly moved into making out with him on a sofa while they watched a football game on the TV that neither of them was paying attention to.

What moved from Gabriel hovering over a disrobed Kurt and moving his lips around the young man's face and down onto his chest while he slow jacked Kurt's cock, to Gabriel moving his mouth down Kurt's chest, belly, and pubes, to taking Kurt's shaft in his mouth and sucking his cock had gone to what Kurt considered premature completion.

Running his fingers into Gabriel's wavy salt-and-pepper head hair and making some effort to pulling the older man's mouth off his cock, Kurt warned, "You'll need to pull back or you'll bring me off with just your mouth."

They had discussed this before in recent weeks. Kurt enjoyed the cock sucking, but he didn't consider the sex completed unless and until there had been anal sex. He hadn't gotten anal sex in weeks.

And he didn't get anal sex now.

Gabriel answered Kurt's plea that he was about to come by pulling his mouth off the younger man's cock only long enough to agree that, "Yes, yes, I'm going to get you off all the way."

Shortly thereafter, Kurt came in Gabriel's throat. He rolled off the bed and away from Gabriel and padded off to the bathroom, not wanting to show his lover his disappointment in completion once again that didn't go beyond this. When he came back to bed, Gabriel was already turned away from him and gently snoring.

One more night of incomplete sex. Kurt lay there, on the bed, Gabriel turned from him and letting his mind drift as it would until he slept. His mind went to the hunky Turk who had visited the bookstore that afternoon. He had made Kurt go hard, but another customer had interrupted and Kurt hadn't even gotten his name. Kurt dozed off in fantasy of the muscular Turk covering and butt fucking him.

His last thought as he went to sleep was that his sailboat had been bought since he in Gabriel were together, but it had been fully his purchase and he'd even paid for the refurbishing and refitting at Gabriel's boatyard. If--no, when--the split came, there would be no dividing of the boat. The sailboat was as much solely his as was this house on the Miles River, which Kurt had inherited from his parents.

* * * *

"I feel like doing a Baltimore Eagles night tonight. It's been a while. Let's let it hang."

Kurt was taken aback. It certainly had been a while since Gabriel had suggested they do anything like that after closing up the Easton bookstore on a Saturday evening. For the last two months he had been saying he just wasn't up to crashing the Baltimore leather bar. It was an hour-and-a-half drive. Before that, they'd regularly gone on to Baltimore Eagles from work. Kurt was close to asking if Gabriel was sure, but he pulled back on that. But then he realized they couldn't anyway.

"We can't go. We'd have to go back to the house first. We don't have our leathers."

"Yes we do," Gabriel answered. "I put them in the back of the store van. We can change when we get to Baltimore."

Baltimore Eagle was a longstanding leather bar on North Charles Street. It didn't let you in unless you were in leathers. Kurt and Gabriel had liked going there. There wasn't much on offer in the region for in-your-face gay male clubbing and they both looked good enough, at their respective ages, in leathers to receive a lot of ogling attention there.

"Sure, why not?" Kurt said, confused but pleased to be doing it. Gabriel hadn't suggested anything like this for some time. Kurt wasn't about to let the opportunity pass them by.

He was even more pleased when they'd gotten to Baltimore, had changed into leathers in the back of the store van, and were welcomed into a crowded night at Baltimore Eagle to quickly find that the Turk who had aroused him at the bookstore the other day and for whom he hadn't gotten contact information was there, leaning into the bar, and with the space next to him having just vacated.

"Order us drinks," Gabriel said. "I see someone over there I need to talk to."

Kurt's attention was on the Turk hunk, though, and whether he could win the space next to him at the bar, so he barely heard what Gabriel said. He certainly didn't care that much that Gabriel wouldn't be following him for a few minutes.

"Hi," he said, gaining the Turk's attention as he slid in beside him. "Kurt from the bookstore the other day. You left before I was able to get contact information."

"You wanted contact information?" the Turk said. "I'm Zoltan. Zoltan Kaya. If I'd known you were interested, I would have been sure to have stayed. Here, let me order you a drink."

If Zoltan was a regular at Baltimore Eagle, he must know, Kurt thought, that when one guy offers to buy another guy a drink, he was declaring as an interested top--and to accept was to declare as a willing submissive. It wasn't rude to decline on the first offer. But Kurt didn't decline.

"Sure, thanks. I'd like a drink. Have you had time to read Shores of Tripoli? What did you think of it?"

"I'm reading it but haven't finished. I'm finding it very interesting. Some good stuff in it on sailing ships. They are, of course, much larger than the one I live on."

"You live on a sailboat?"

"Yes, a thirty-foot Catalina 30Tall Rig. You ever heard of one like that? I have it docked at the Olde Town Marina in Annapolis. I help manage the marina and help with boat repair and they left me dock there."

"Yes, I know that boat. Sleek. Sexy."

Zoltan laughed, picked up one of the beers as they arrived, took a sip from one before handing it to Kurt, and gave the declared submissive a seductive smile.

"It's a lot of boat," he said.

"I'm a lot of man," Zoltan responded.

"Yes, you certainly are," Kurt agreed. "My guy--you met him at the bookstore, Gabriel Lockwood--has a boat repair boatyard near St. Michaels. He's got a 30Tall Rig there under repair now. I have a sailboat too, a twenty-foot Hunter 20."

"It takes skill to handle one of those too," Zoltan said. "I'll bet you've got skills." He moved an arm around Kurt's waist, pulling him in close.

"We could find out."

Gabriel hadn't made it to the bar yet. Kurt wasn't really that worried about where he was and what he was doing. The Turk was making some fact moves. But that was quite all right with Kurt.

* * * *

The back row of rooms at the Motel 6 on East North Avenue quite evidently was set up for the by-the-hour trade that Zoltan, Gabriel, and Kurt were now making the use of. There were mirrors on the wall on either side of the double bed to triple the pleasure for those on the bed. In this case the two were Zoltan and Kurt. Gabriel was sitting off to the side, his cock out and in his hand, and beating himself off as he enjoyed the view.

Kurt was bent over the bed, his arms stretched above his head, his fingers grabbing at the bedspread and opening and closing to the rhythm of the fuck. Zoltan was crouched over and behind him, hands pressing the young man's shoulders to the mattress, deep and thick inside his anal canal, and fucking, fucking, fucking, exhibiting his body-builder's stamina.

Gabriel had shown up at the bar just as Zoltan and Kurt were settling on leaving and finding a motel.

"A Motel 6 is close by," Zoltan was saying. "They are very accommodating."

"What's this? You boys were going to go off for some fun without me?" Gabriel asked.

"Listen, Gabriel," Kurt said. "It's been some time since you and I--and you know I have needs. You've always been good about."

"There's no problem, Kurt. I know you were in lust with this guy when you saw him in the bookstore--and that he had the same reaction as you did. What I asked is exactly what I meant. It's fine with me that you're going off with him. I want to go too. I want to watch. God knows is about all I can still do."

Kurt didn't ask him what he meant about that. He was too relieved that Gabriel was going to be good with this thing with Zoltan.

* * * *

They didn't talk about that Saturday night over the next week. Kurt thought they probably should do so, but he didn't have the courage to bring it up. Was Gabriel drifting away from him, not wanting him to make total love to him anymore? Was Gabriel content now in watching someone else do Kurt totally while he made an effort to bring himself off? Kurt wasn't sure that Gabriel had managed to bring himself off while watching Zoltan fucking Kurt. On Wednesday night, they had sex again, but as with the week before, Gabriel insisted on bringing Kurt off with his hand and going no further.

But, when Saturday came again, and Gabriel suggested going into Baltimore, this time to the tamer Leon's of Baltimore gay bar, Kurt said yes. And if Kurt was surprised to find that Zoltan was at that bar the same night and that they made arrangements to make use of the Motel 6 for a threesome--again Gabriel only watching--it seemed to Kurt that Gabriel hadn't been surprised at all.

This time, the same room they'd used the Saturday before, the one with mirrors on both sides of the bed, they spent more time and effort in the coupling and both took full advantage of the mirrors to admire the missionary and crab positions Zoltan used. Kurt normally might have had qualms about being covered where Gabriel could see them and know that they were two, younger, more athletic, and more intense than Gabriel could provide. Zoltan was hung and he was more inventive and demanding that Gabriel had ever been. He was vigorous and long lasting, using his muscularity and dexterity to put Kurt in controlling positions that allowed him to mine the younger man's anal canal at great depth, vigorously, and interminably.

Kurt was totally mastered. He cried out, moaned, and groaned for Zoltan as he never did with Gabriel, as the monster cock moved in and out, going deeper, throbbing, focusing all of Kurt's attention, and making the younger man beg and whine for the cock.

Throughout, Gabriel sat and pulled at his own shaft, declaring that he was enjoying himself and not begrudging what Kurt was receiving from another man. At the same time, Kurt saw the tears in his lover's eyes and dared not give much thought to what they meant.

He began to get an inkling of what they meant later in the week, though, when they attended a cocktail party at their doctor's house in the nearby town on Oxford. Stanley Ledderman lived in a spacious penthouse apartment on North Morris Street, looking directly out on the Tred Avon River. Ledderman was the doctor of preference for the wealthy gay men living in the region, although his very lucrative practice extended beyond that group. He was gay himself, a good looker, well-gymed, cocky as they came--with good reason--and into his late forties.