Tan Lines

I nervously waited in the Philadelphia International Airport baggage claim area for Angus Talbot to pass through from his return from three weeks in the Bahamas. That was half the time I'd been working for him, transferring from the Chicago office at his request. At twenty-five, I was in my first job following graduate school as a concept artist at a major architectural firm. I did artist renderings of big-ticket building projects my firm was working on. I was fully trained and licensed as an architect, having gotten my advanced degree from the University of Chicago, but my artist skills were the most in demand. I had financed my college by doing male modeling in Chicago. I hadn't gotten back into that in Philadelphia yet, though.

I didn't mind the wait itself in the airport. It was hot and steamy, nearly 100 degrees outside in this third week in August. But I was nervous about having been sent out to meet this plane. Talbot was a senior vice president in the Philadelphia office. He'd been in the Bahamas for three weeks helping to guide the construction of a hotel there. What I was nervous about, though, was what he'd revealed to me a week before he went out on this business trip. He'd said he'd asked for my transfer specifically because he wanted me to do more for him than paint concept pictures. He wanted me to lay down for him. Someone in the architecture department at the university had told him I would do that.

I'd laid down for men before. It's hard for a male model to do that sort of work without doing so. The models are narcissistic to begin with to be that fussy with their bodies—and I certainly was—but laying down for photographers and commercial producers was pretty much a given in that business. One reason I'd accepted the transfer to Philadelphia, though, was to put that into my past—not the part of having sex with men, but the part of having it connected to getting work and being at the mercy of other men rather than choosing for myself.

Angus Talbot wanted me to be at his mercy. It wasn't that he wasn't a hunk and a half, which he was—in his early forties, but tall, handsome, and slender. There was a distinguished aspect about him, with the look of authority and gray-sideburned solidness of deserved self-confidence. It was that I didn't want to be under anyone's sexual control anymore. If he'd just waited a bit for me to get my bearings, I might have come to him willingly—but probably not, as I had promised myself I'd try to keep that out of the office.

I had avoided him in the week between his revealing how I had gotten to Philadelphia and what he expected from me and his departure for the Bahamas. But now he was back, and the office had directed me to pick him up at the airport. I half believed that he had told the office to send me so that I couldn't avoid him anymore.

I did a double take when I saw Talbot enter the baggage claim area. For some reason he looked a lot sexier than he had before he'd left. Maybe I'd unconsciously adjusted to the idea of lying under him in the three weeks he'd been gone. He was walking like he owned the town and was deeply tanned and all sunny smiles when he saw me. I didn't understand until later why I suddenly was taking notice of him.

"David," he said, as he walked up to me, "It's good of you to come pick me up. You're looking good."

"You're looking great yourself, Mr. Talbot," I said. "The Bahamas really suited you. That's one deep tan you've got."

"You've been getting a tan yourself," he said. "And call me Angus. I trust we will be on close enough terms for that."

"I've discovered the pool in my apartment building," I answered. I didn't think I was ready to talk about how close our terms would be.

"Sweet. An all-over tan?"

"It's not that sort of apartment house pool," I said, with a laugh. I only later found out why he'd asked that, and it made all the difference for me for the rest of the summer.

"You parked within a mile?" he asked, as he pulled his suitcase off the conveyer belt.

"I taxied. You live downtown. I didn't think I'd be able to find a parking place near your place." He lived on the eleventh-floor of a high rise on Rittenhouse Square that our firm had designed—a two-bedroom, all glass windows, corner apartment valued in the nearly $2 million range. I lived further out in a medium-rise studio apartment.

"You knew I'd ask you to come up to my apartment?" He flashed me a smile.

Apparently, I had, without thinking about it—and, beyond that, I apparently had decided I would. And that was before I'd seen him now, in the airport, and for some reason he'd made me go hard. "Uh, I guess so," I said.

"So, you will come up to my apartment? You've thought about this?"

"Yes," I said, "if that's what you want."

"Good boy," he said, with a satisfied smile. I was falling in with his plans.

I hadn't thought about much of anything else for the three weeks he'd been away. He placed his free hand on the small of my back to guide me as we moved out of the baggage claim area and to the taxi stand, and I did nothing to move away from him. He patted me on the ass and then squeezed it as I folded myself into the backseat of the taxi and had a hand high up on my thigh as the taxi drove us into the downtown area. As we cruised down a dimly lit street, he kissed me on the lips, and I let him. He took my hand as we kissed and put it on his basket. I'd just let him know he owned me and he was taking possession.

He fucked me on the sleek contemporary, gray-tweed sofa in his all-windows living and dining room combination. He'd first had me strip and pose and walk for him. He'd made references to me being a runway model before, and now he was cashing in on that. This is when I learned of his fetish. It's also when I started being awakened to the reality that it was my own fetish as well. I'd been living in Chicago and concentrating on my graduate studies. It wasn't really place for tanning. I hadn't keyed into tanned bodies and tan lines as being erotic. But they were.

"Very nice," he said. "You wear a Speedo at the pool?" He was sitting on the sofa. He had shucked off his shirt to show not only a muscular physique but also a deep, bronze tan. I found the tan arousing.

"Yes," I said, realizing only at this point how good my tan was and that it revealed tan lines that showed that I wore the briefest of Speedos to the pool. It was a reflection of my having been a model; I had no trouble showing off my finely honed body.

"Come here," he said, and that's when I found out what a tan lines fetish was about. I walked over to him and he put an arm around my waist to hold me close in between his spread thighs, and used his other hand and his tongue to follow and play with the lines separating my tan from the areas the Speedo had covered: the curve of my buttocks, my lower groin, and a thin line around my hips. He'd taken his tie off and bound my wrists together behind my back with it—I could have easily gotten out the bonds physically, but not so easily emotionally. It was yet another symbol that he owned my body at least for this evening. An earlier lover had taught me the totality of surrender of allowing yourself to be bound, if only nominally. He'd been cruel to me while bound, and I had melted to him like to no other to that point.

Angus hummed the pleasure of playing with the transition lines, letting me know that it was the tan lines that turned him on, and eventually moving his mouth to my cock and balls and sucking me off while he held me close, my wrists bound behind my back. I came for him there, and he laughed at my surrender to him.

Later I was on my back lying across the sofa, my head on the armrest, as he hovered over me, his knees on either side of my chest and his fists trapping my now unbound wrists while he fed his cock into my throat. He was naked now, too, and this was the beginning of the revelation that I shared his tan lines fetish. I guess I'd always had, when I then thought back onto the past. I'd always noticed when a guy I saw in the communal showers or the man on top of me showed tan lines or not. I just hadn't consciously given thought to it before. It arose now, because Talbot spoke of the fetish and had worshipped my body in this context, and because of the disappointment I felt when he had stripped off his trousers. His torso was tanned—he'd obviously gone shirtless while working in the hotel under construction in the Bahamas, but he had worn long pants. His pelvis and legs weren't tanned. I didn't have the tan lines to explore and enjoy on his body that he had on mine. They were evident only at his waistline.

Still, when he moved down my body and between my spread thighs, and was inside me, slow pumping me, while his fingers were still tracing the tan lines on my body from where my Speedo hit, when I reached down to palmed his butt cheeks to hold him inside me as he thrust, I was well aware that I was palming alabaster-white cheeks while a bronze-tanned muscular chest was pressing into mine, and it gave me a little extra sexual charge as he fucked me to his ejaculation.

* * * *

"Take a vacation to the ocean on the office tab," Angus said, smiling at me. "You haven't been to the ocean here on the East Coast yet, have you? And we're so close here."

"No, sir, I haven't," I answered. "Does the office pay for beach vacations though?" What I wanted to say was did the office pay Angus's prostitute fees, because he certainly was making me feel like I was a prostitute for him. He'd put me together with a couple of select clients. He'd fucked me twice more in his apartment since he'd returned from the Bahamas, during which he'd complimented me on my deepening tan from visits to my apartment pool. The third time he called me to his apartment, he had a client there, who fucked me on Talbot's bed while he watched. Twice after that he just had me appear at a hotel room where a client was waiting for me.

Talbot had been sunning himself at his pool too, obviously wearing a Speedo as skimpy as mine was. He was developing tan lines that affected me in a way that assured me that I had the same fetish he did.

"We have some buildings going up in Trenton, New Jersey, that we need inspected and sketched. I'll send you there and you can extend on the Jersey shore on the office dime for a few days when you're done in Trenton. Go to a Jersey beach. Work on that tan of yours."

And that, of course, was his motivation for giving me an expense-paid beach vacation. He wanted me to maintain a tan with lines that fed his fetish. I didn't turn the offer down.

* * * *

The beach at the old resort town of Cape May, New Jersey, proved to be the ideal place to explore my new-found sexual fetish. There was a public bathhouse on the beach, right on Beach Avenue at the foot of South Broadway at the western end of the town beach, that served my purposes ideally. And this was a time of year—the last week in August—where guy's tans were finely honed. Mine was. I had great tan lines from my minimalist Speedo that showed my body off to pelvis and butt-highlighting perfection for any guy so interested.

I checked into one of those old Victorian-style gingerbread-trimmed hotels between where Madison and Philadelphia Avenues opened onto Beach Avenue at its eastern end. The old hotels in this area were so impressive in their period flamboyance that I spent the morning sitting and sketching them.

In the afternoon I walked down the length of the promenade to the other side of the beach, small bag in hand, carrying two beach towels and my personal items, including two copies of my room card and, with hope, a string of condom packets and tube of lube. At the western end of the beach I settled down on the boardwalk side of where some hunky guys were playing beach volleyball. They were all guys about my age, with body-builder physiques, most with good features, and all a golden brown. They were playing just in swim suits, several of them in Speedos as skimpy as the one I was wearing. The game was been played in a desultory manner that indicated they were there more to be ogled than to compete in a game.

One of the guys, a beautiful Nordic blond, kept looking over at me. When I stood and stretched, which caused the waistband of my Speedo to dip enough to show my tan line at the waist, I saw his eyebrows go up and he smiled. Not long after that he called over to me and invited me to join them at the volleyball net, which I did. He introduced himself as Jack, a local, and he brought me onto the line next to him. It was an active game, one I knew how to hold my own in, and I was as aggressive to the ball as he was, which involved a lot of body contact between us, but a lot of success in our play as well.

When the game wound down, we all went our separate ways, but, in looking around, I saw that Jack was standing near the top of the beach, on the boardwalk, near the public shower building, his duffel bag in hand, and looking at me. When he could see that I spotted him, he stood there for a minute, the two of us eyeing each other, until he seemed sure I was watching him. Then he turned and walked to the shower building. There, beside the building, he turned again and looked at me before walking around the side and, presumably, into the building.

I got it—or at least what I assumed he was signaling. I picked up my stuff and walked up to and into the shower building. For several minutes Jack and I were the only ones in the men's communal shower. We were both naked. We were both in erection, so there wasn't much doubt we were both interested—and in each other. His tan lines were as perfect as the ones I had been developing. His pelvis was alabaster white, showing off a huge erection, curly blond pubes, hollows under his hips, and bulbous butt cheeks. His tan was a golden brown, his torso muscular and cut, his thighs muscled like a cyclist's would be.

We stood next to each other, three-quarters facing, soaping up and at the ready to turn from each other at the hint of someone else coming into the shower. Jack made the first move, reaching out and tracing the tan lines below my belly and just above my trimmed black, curly pubic bush. He was familiar, at least, with the fetish. It was meaningful to me in those terms that he had touched me along the tan lines before touching my cock. I groaned and reached out for him in the same matter. We got to fingering each other's cocks, pushing the hoods back over the bulbs, when we heard someone else coming into the shower and both turned and went upon normal business of rinsing off and going into the dressing room and toweling off, each of us watching the other as we did.

I had shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals in my bag. I changed into those. Jack had the same and, dressed, we stood there, eyeing each other for some twenty seconds. He'd made the first moves until now. Would he do so again? There was an aching question out there. He knew it too, though.

"I'm exclusively a top," he said.

"Perfect," I responded.

"You want to go for a drink?" he asked.

"Sure." I wanted more than that, but he wouldn't have pinned down the position each of us preferred taking in sex if this wasn't leading to having sex.

"There's a bar called the Martini Beach nearby at Beach Avenue and Decatur."

"I've heard of it," I said. And I'd had. Angus Talbot had recommended it to me—a gay bar—when he'd told me what hotel to book at.

The bar was on the second floor. Jack told me there was another floor above that, with private rooms, that we could visit if I wanted to. There weren't many in the bar, all men.

"The place comes alive from happy hour on," Jack said, as he slid behind the bar and got us two beers. He'd been greeted by most of the men when we came in.

"Yes, I work here," he said to my quizzical lift of an eyebrow. "Only part time and only in the summer months. I come to Cape May for the suntan, which I think you've already picked up on, but I don't live here permanently. I like to tan with a Speedo on and I like it when others have, like you. I think maybe you understand why."

"Yes, I understand. I agree," I answered. "So, this isn't your regular job?"

"No. I work most of the year in Philly and around the country from there. I'm a personal trainer for the Philadelphia Flyers, the pro ice hockey team."

"So, fry in the summer and freeze in the winter."

"Something like that," he said and we both laughed. Mine was a little forced, though, and he noticed that I had cooled a bit. I noticed that he noticed and covered for my real concern.

"Then your tan can only be enjoyed in the summer and then not until you've developed it?" I asked.

"We have tanning booths in the team workout area. A tan—with tan lines—is something I keep up with all year round."

"Oh, good," I said. And then I broached my concern, coming at it from the side. "I live in Philadelphia myself. Just moved there from Chicago. I'm a junior architect, working for a big firm." I didn't name the firm.

"Oh, that's good," he said, but I discerned a new reserve coming from him as well. I was glad to hear it, though, and took a stab at clearing it all up.

"I don't like to have my fun, like this, where I live and work, though. I like to keep it casual and away from Philadelphia."

"Good to hear," he said. "Me too. I try not to engage in casual sex in Philly." And with that we were back on track to hooking up. Neither one of us was looking for something more permanent out of a meeting like this when we got home.

"So? A tour of the upstairs now?" He asked. "Or another beer?"

"Or maybe this," I said, taking one of my room keys out of my bag and sliding it across the bar toward him. "More privacy maybe. It's the Oscar. Do you know it?" I told him the room number.

"Everyone in here knows the Oscar," Jack said, sliding the key card off into his palm. And there's every reason why guys came in here would know the hotel. It was in the main line of the Victorian-style behemoths on Beach Avenue between Madison and Pennsylvania. It was tucked into the shadow of one of the largest hotels, the Grand Hotel, and probably was thought by most to be part of that hotel. Both were painted the same shade of white, probably at the same time. The Oscar, which I surmised got its name from Oscar Wilde, mercifully was overlooked by most because it wasn't as flamboyantly decorated with curly-que trim work as the Grand Hotel was. Catering to gay men, it tried to keep a low profile while still offering a view of the beach and sea. My room, tucked in the corner of the mansard attic, had the view, but neither Jake nor I took advantage of it.

We took advantage of each other.

* * * *

When Jack came into my room, I was naked and on the bed, my cheek and chest pressed to the sheet, my tail lifted, on my knees, the knees planted at the edge of the mattress at the foot of the bed, my butt pointed at the door from the corridor. I was ready for him, in a "take what you want" position. I could hear the soft rustle of his T-shirt and shorts as he stripped them off and then his breathing as he came up between my spread legs. I felt his hands on my hips.

And then, before anything else, I felt his fingers tracing the tan lines around my lower back and upper thighs. His hands went down and around me following the tan lines to my lower belly and the curve of my upper thigh into my torso. As he traced these lines, his lips and tongue went to tracing the tan lines at my back as well.

A hand came in under me between my legs and he was fingering my cock and balls, and then my hole, thumbing it, worrying the rim, coaxing it to pucker and open for him, which it did. I was panting and trembling and his breath was getting heavier, more jagged. He began slowly milking my cock with one hand while the other roamed about, following the tan line, returning to my hole.