Shell Game

Nick was on all fours on the motel-room bed, but was shaking. He only was maintaining position now, I thought, because I was holding him up. I was crouched over him, hovering on top of him, my knees bent, my hands grasping his waist, as I pounded, pounded, pounded him, hard and deep, pulling every ounce of submission and sexiness out of him. He moved a hand underneath him, going down on that shoulder, although I held him up still, using the aching spring in my knees and calf muscles to keep up the fast pistoning of my thrusts. My face was buried into the side of his throat, my teeth pressed into his throbbing carotid artery.

The young man was shaking. I knew he had handed himself and was stroking himself off.

"Hurry," I whispered in his ear, unloosening my teeth briefly, but only briefly. "Come before I do."

He tensed, shuddered, and came. I pulled out of him and let loose of his hips to rip the condom off my cock. He collapsed on the bed under me, and, giving my shaft the last few strokes, I spouted my seed on the small of his back. I rolled off to the side, onto my back, and turned my face toward his. We were both panting hard, our chests heaving from the exertion of the fuck. We smiled wanly at each other.

"God damn. Fuck," he muttered when he could catch his breath.

"Exactly," I answered. He was a great lay. I regretted it would be for this night only. But I wouldn't let him get away with just this once. I'd fuck him again and leave him with something to remember me by.

"Gotta piss," he murmured, rolling over to the side of the bed and sitting up. "You won't . . .?"

"I'll be right here. I'm going to fuck you again."

"God damn. Fuck," he said as he propelled himself toward the bathroom. He closed the door, which I was afraid he wouldn't do. In fact, I had been afraid he wasn't going to break away and leave me alone for even a moment. But he did. The plans were working perfectly.

With a weary groan, I hopped out of bed, picked up his trousers, and rifled through the pockets. The two credit cards were in the same pocket—the one he'd taken off the bruiser in the back hallway at the BackEntry Bar and the one in Rocky Holtz's name I'd let him swipe from me at the IHOP. I took both of them and transferred them to my trousers.

When Nick stumbled out of bathroom, I was sitting on the side of the bed facing that door with the toys in my hand that I'd taken out of the small duffle bag I'd brought in from the car with us. Nick hadn't asked what was in the bag. If he had, we might have had some initial problem and I might have had to manhandle him earlier.

He did a double-take when he saw me holding wrist and ankle restraints in one hand and a ball gag in the other. "You're not . . ." he muttered.

"Yes, I am." And I did. He was two-thirds my size and weight, and surprise was on my side. I also had exhausted him in the first fuck—and hadn't exhausted myself nearly as much as I'd led him to believe. It was no contest. In just a few moments, I had him on his back on the bed and his arms thrown over his head, with his wrists restrained to the headboard of the bed. I had him muffled with the ball gag, pillows under the small of his back to elevate his pelvis, and I stood over him, looking down at him, while I rolled another condom on my erection.

I went down on my knees between his spread legs, grabbed his ankles, raised and spread his legs wide, positioned myself between his thighs, thrust inside him as he arched his back and screamed through the ball gag, and fucked him and fucked him and fucked him.

When I pulled out, ripped the condom off, and jacked off on his belly, he was moaning and groaning softly, but he was lying still, all of the fight out of him. He offered no resistance, as I used the two lengths of ankle restraints to tie his spread legs off at the bottom corners of the bed.

I went to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. When I came out, toweling myself off, he was still there, just as I assumed he'd be. He followed me around the room with his eyes, which were bugging out of his head. I pulled on my briefs and retrieved the two purloined credit cards from my trousers. I'm sure he was surprised they were in my trousers rather than his. He was going to have several surprises coming his way. So was his father, Sal. Sal had assigned me to protect his precious little naughty boy, not ruin him. But Sal hadn't been good to me—certainly not as good as the Corda family of Sicilians from the Bronx, who weren't all that friendly with the Giordano family from Jersey City, were being with their pocketbook.

I wasn't that wild about the Cordas either, but their money was good and I didn't plan to affiliate with them any more than with the Giordanos. The Cordas and I had been planning something like this for some time. Sal telling me to babysit his son from afar over April Fool's day just gave me a theme and a hook to enjoy myself in fucking Sal as well as his son. I'm always looking forward to ways to enjoy my work.

I took the small, cheap laptop computer out of the duffle bag. I'd bought it with the Rocky Holtz credit card, the one I was going to leave with Nick. The real Rocky Holtz, a loser hood from L.A. with multiple outstanding warrants and a talent for evading the law, fortuitously looked a whole hell of a lot like Nick Giordano did. I sat at the desk, while Nick recovered from his fucking and writhed and snorted his disapproval from the bed, turned the computer on, and started ordering, using both of the credit cards. I was inventive with my ordering—BDSM sex toys, knives, guns, and the makings of a few pipe bombs. It was fascinating what one could order from the Internet and count on delivery. I had it all delivered to Sal Giordano's house, with rush delivery, so it would arrive before he returned from his trip east.

After I finished, I took the spray bottle of Crew surface cleaner and the clean rag out of my duffle and cleaned down all of the surfaces I'd touched in the room, including the Rocky Holtz credit card. Nick tried to resist when I took the credit card over to his prone figure and got his prints on the card again, but he wasn't in a position to prevent it.

I'd been careful about what I'd touched and remembering what it had been. I left the Rocky Holtz credit card in Nick's trouser pocket, but took the card Nick had stolen with me to order a few more things in the name of Nicolo Giordano to have sent to Sal's house. For a brief moment I paused to hope to hell that the bruiser from the bar had a good, verifiable alibi for these few hours, but I hadn't particularly liked the look of him, so he was on his own.

I also left Nick trussed up on the bed.

I drove the Mustang to the Plaza to retrieve my Camaro from its remote parking place in the hotel casino's garage. I took my time wiping the Mustang down, but that too I'd been careful about touching anywhere I didn't remember having done. I drove the Camaro out onto Fremont Street, drove through the nighttime crowd in the old downtown section of Las Vegas, and found a spot to pull over into. I called the Super 8 Motel and informed them that a guy calling himself Rocky—I had used the Rocky card to book the room by phone—had tried to mug me at the motel. I gave my name as that of the name on the card Nick had lifted from the bruiser at the BackEntry Bar. I said that I'd overpowered him and they could find him in the room he'd try to mug me in. I added that I thought he was wanted in L.A.

I made it to the IHOP by the 3:00 a.m. change of shift. I was waiting outside, in the Camaro, when Phil came out. His face lit up in a grin when he saw me. I was going to hightail it back to Toronto, California, under my real name that neither Sal Giordano nor the Cordas knew, with a suitcase stuffed with money from both of them, having given them both a taste of April Fool's. But I didn't see why I couldn't do a bit of celebrating before I left Las Vegas.

So, I drove Phil back to his small apartment on Oakford, conveniently found and used another set of restraints and a ball gag in my duffle bag, and banged the hell out of him until dawn brushed away April Fool's Day. He didn't seem to mind.