The Glass House Ch. 02

Peekaboo

"Who's that?" I asked. The laugh had made me look beyond Linda's desk, beyond the work floor, to the glass-walled office in the corner. We were on the twenty-third floor, the fourth of the ten floors the John Hoffman Financial Services Company had in the Manhattan building. It was a deep-throated, self-confident, "This is my realm" laugh. I'd been flirting with Linda, the receptionist for the floor, when I heard the laugh. I always flirted with the receptionists during my mail delivery rounds at my morning job. It was good for camouflage purposes.

"That's himself, Colby," Linda answered. "Ralph is retiring. He has his own office. The brass show up to hand over the watch and see an employee off when someone in their own corner office retires." Linda was giving me that special smile. She was just another of the young women--and men--in the office who would be happy to have a blond, twenty-year-old song and dance student in the Big Apple, who was working here part time to help make his way, cover them. I'd do it for some of the young men I'd met here--and, for money, for some of the older ones. But I turned to women like Linda, who was perfectly beautiful, mind you, only as camouflage at parties where I needed to impress a straight crowd and I wouldn't fuck them after the party. My claim to fame was that I always managed to keep them as friends and confidantes even when I didn't let the relationship to go further. Some of them, I'm sure, figured it out and just liked me enough for it not to tick them off.

"Himself?" I asked, assessing the man standing in a gaggle of expensive suits, mostly men, but a few women, in what must be Ralph's soon-to-be-vacated office. My assessment didn't come up with anything negative other than arrogance, and I could take arrogance from a man who had every reason to be so. He was tall, nearly six-and-a-half feet, lean, with a ram-rod-straight back. He looked quite fit for someone appearing to be in his very late forties or mid-fifties. He was movie star handsome, with rugged features and a mane of wavy black hair, graying at the temples. His demeanor was all confidence and command. He could easily win clients for this financial services company just by smiling into the camera for a TV commercial for the firm.

As if he knew someone standing two glass walls away from him with a working floor of low-walled cubicles between them was assessing him, he turned a bit and let his eyes sweep the room before returning to concentrating on the departing Ralph. His gaze paused briefly at me--or was it the beautiful Linda--before sweeping on. Peekaboo, I see you.

"Himself, as in Josh Hoffman himself," Linda said. "Look busy. Hand me some mail. Pretend you're telling me something about the special handling requirements of one of the envelopes." I complied.

I doubted it was me he paused at, a lowly twenty-year-old morning-duty-only mail clerk with no ambitions at rising at Josh Hoffman Financial Services. I planned to be an actor. All of my effort was going into my studies to make that pan out. All of my sacrifices--which were great, went far beyond walking behind a mail cart in ten floors of a mid-Manhattan office building.

The retirement thrill was over and the corporate crowd, moving as one herd, Himself in the center of the gaggle, the center of everyone's attention, moved past us and to the elevators. Did Josh Hoffman turn his gaze toward Linda and me as he passed? Did he do a "peekaboo, I see you?" No, I don't think so.

The flurry packed into elevators and ascended to corporate heaven, I turned the cart to moving down the aisle between cubicles and distributing my treasures.

"Colby," Linda said, as I pushed off. "Call me." I could hear the ache in her voice. She was a nice girl. The next straight party I went to I'd surely ask her if she wanted to go. There would be no fuck afterward, though. And that, I'm sure would be the last time she turned her moon eyes at me. She'd understand.

"Surely will, Doll," I said, moving on.

* * * *

I had to wear a company uniform to distribute the mail at Josh Hoffman Financial Services. I didn't mind. I looked good in the uniform, it saved me from having to buy office-appropriate duds of my own, and, when I was in the uniform, I could treat the lowly job as just an acting role I was in. It gave me valuable "get into and stay in character" practice. I could practice being invisible and subservient to the suits.

There was an employee's locker room in the bowels of the office where I changed. Today, rather than changing into my street clothes to go to class, I changed into gym clothes. I didn't have any classes this day. I had an assignment with my other job--the other job that paid me far more than Josh Hoffman Financial Services did--but the job that took more out of me too. It was a job that allowed me to roleplay in an entirely different way.

I was to meet the man, Warren, the escort service had said, at a gym five blocks away from the building Josh Hoffman's was in. I'd be on the approved check-in list under my escort service's name, Clint James. I was sort of sorry the escort service had that name for me. I thought it would be a good stage name, but now I never could use it for that.

This Warren had asked for a guy who was fit and flexible. Blond, good looking, and athletic. I'd been a gymnast and was studying to be a Broadway show dancer, which I'd occasionally been able to do--and, hopefully, moving to center stage as an actor sooner rather than later--so I'd worked hard to remain in shape and limber into my twenties. I assumed that having the meet at a gym meant the guy would be fit himself, and that was true, although he turned out to be a bit older than I had thought he'd be.

The gym I was directed to was a serious one, providing gymnastic equipment as well as fitness machines. The man I met, calling himself Shep, also looked to be a serious gym rat. He was very fit, maybe in his early forties--barrel chested, tapering down to a narrow waist and hips, the taut material of his deep-arm and chest cut athletic T-shirt showing the cut six pack. His thighs and calves were like tree trunks; his biceps bulging. He was bald and a bit thuggish looking--not ugly, but with a cut scar from an earlobe down to the corner of his mouth. He looked to be hairless, including in his pits, but he had a pec tattoo on the left side, swirls of black, which extended down his left arm to his wrist. His athletic shorts were tight on his body, and although he didn't bulge, I could see that he had a PA ring in his bulb. That gave me a little shudder.

He didn't tell me much about himself, including how he'd hooked up with the escort service. He mentioned something about Tulsa, Oklahoma, and oil, and being in New York City on business. He had to be wealthy to afford the escort services fees.

I'd been told he wanted a young, fit, good-looking blond with gymnastics experience. He tested the experience part, bypassing the fitness equipment and spotting me on the parallel bars and the rings. His spotting included feeling me up while I was showing him that I knew how to perform the gymnast skills. He must have been satisfied, because he took me from there to an early dinner at a moderately expensive steak house. He changed in the gym locker room--slowly, watching my expression of what was revealed as he stripped. Being in character, I gave him the gasps of appreciation he obviously was looking for. He insisted I strip and change in front of him so we could get a good look at each other. He looked quite good undressed. I knew that I did too. I was dressed city casual. He wore jeans, a cowboy shirt, and fancy Western boots.

At the restaurant I ordered the most expensive cut, but a small portion of it, with a salad and no carbs, which seemed to impress him. He felt me up under the table to the panting level while he watched me eat. I never could tell until we reached this point if the guy just wanted to pretend or was a player. Shep wasn't pretending. He was going to fuck me.

All he had was a medley of steamed vegetables and black coffee. He offered dessert, but I declined, which also seemed to please him. He drew a hotel room card out of his pocket, telling me the hotel, which was within a block of here, and the room number. He handed me the room card.

"You go first. Pose for mounting, looking away, at the headboard, for when I arrive," he said. He hadn't said much. What he said now impressed me. He was quite explicit in his wants. He also seemed just a little bit crazy.

Other than leaving the PA ring in to fuck me, there wasn't anything unusual about the first coupling. I was posed, naked, on all fours on the bed, facing the headboard, when he came into the room. I heard him stripping off as he stood behind me, and then he explored me with his hands, from my rump up to my nipples and down my thighs, like I was some prize calf at the county fair. Returning to my ass, he fingered my hole, teased my balls, putting a hand through between my thighs, and stroked my cock as I got sexed up. His attention went back to my hole, which he breached with more than one finger and worried hard. I gasped and moaned for him, and that wasn't an act. He massaged my prostate, and I had to concentrate not to come from that.

Most of the time he was using one hand on me, so I knew he was bringing himself to an erection. I was ready at any time. His face pushed in between my butt cheeks, his tongue went where his fingers had just been, and after a few minutes I was more than ready for his shaft.

He climbed up on the bed; mounted me from behind and above; penetrated several inches, the feel of the PA ring sliding inside me causing me to gasp; grasped my hips between his hands; and fucked me.

The gymnastics transpired a bit later, when we'd recovered our libidos from him fucking me, sheathed, and me stroking myself off while he did so. He fucked me on the bed in what I knew, from studying the male Kamasutra, was called the position of the crab--Shep on his back and me stretched out on top of him, pointed at the ceiling. I was holding myself off his body with my hands planted beside his shoulders and my feet planted beside his thighs, as, grasping my waist between his hands, Shep raised and lowered me on his cock.

I was playing the role of high-end rent-boy to the hilt. He, in fact, was in to the hilt much of the time.

Later, with Shep on his back, reclining against the headboard, I reclined in front of him, pointed at his feet and grasping his ankles, my legs streaming back along his side toward the headboard, as, holding my waist again, he pulled me on and off the cock. His only spoken orders to me were for me to show him my flexibility in assuming the demanding positions he wanted from me. Before ejaculating, he turned his body to a sitting position on the side of the bed, without losing purchase of his cock inside me, and grasped my wrists. My torso was cantilevered out over the carpet at the side of the bed, while he pulled me on and off the cock.

He was a virile man, a fast and frequent loader. I thought he was done; he'd used me almost nonstop for nearly two hours. But he wasn't done. Men from Tulsa apparently demanded their full money's worth. I was standing over the toilet, taking a piss before getting into the shower when Shep appeared behind me and growled in my ear, "reach for the wall and jut your ass back." I did as commanded, and he palmed my belly with one hand, and fisted my cock after putting his dick in position with the other. There, the two of us hovering over the toilet bowl, he fucked me to another ejaculation.

When I was showered and dressed and leaving, he asked, "Do you do groups?"

"When the fee is big enough," I answered. "All worked out with the escort agency. You know how to reach them."

A little strange, but different, I thought, as I walked the several blocks to my room in the upper floors of a tenement. I had one room, dominated by a double bed and a small shower bath. What passed for a basic kitchen unit held up one wall. There was a message to call the escort agency flashing on my landline phone when I entered the room. The agency insisted that I keep that phone in addition to a cell phone. They paid for both, though, so that was fine with me.

I called back.

"You up for a midnight session?" the dispatcher asked. "A group, paying $1,000. A little kinky, I'm told."

A group? Tonight. My first thought was that Shep worked real fast.

"Where?" I asked.

She gave me an address, a brownstone in an expensive block up toward Colombia University from here. "It's a men's club," she said.

Didn't sound like Shep. It wasn't. I was met at the door by a middle-aged man in a black suit and a morose look on his face. From the front hall, I could see into some sort of a wood-paneled lounge area, thick with cigar smoke and dotted with men, several older, in tuxedos and holding brandy snifters, in the hands not lifting cigars.

"On the second floor," the doorman said. "Sidney will show you." Another morose-visaged middle-aged man in a black suit appeared. Both men were wearing white gloves. I heard the front door open when I was still on the second-floor landing.

Peekaboo, I thought, as I saw the man, tall and straight, a fine head of hair, wearing a tuxedo, enter the building. The doorman held out a black face mask, but I'd seen him before he put it on.

The entertainment was in a large wood-paneled room above the smoking lounge I'd seen downstairs. I was the entertainment. The show opened with me bound, wrists and ankles to a St. Andrew's cross, facing out, at one end of the room. My mind went to a Tom Cruise movie I'd seen and I put myself into the role of the boy of the night for a group of randy high rollers. I went into an act where I was younger and more innocent, but resigned to being treated cruelly. I set my face in an expression I thought went with this role.

I was naked except for a black bow tie and a black satin thong pouch covering my cock and balls. Eight men, all in black tuxedoes and white gloves and wearing black half masks on their faces, some fit looking, some not, of varying ages, filed in after I was in place, and a spotlight was pointed on me. The chairs were arranged in an oval, all facing the St. Andrew's cross. In the center of the oval was an ottoman, covered with black velvet.

A master of ceremonies--and, it turned out, auctioneer--stood beside me, in a black suit, white gloves, black mask, and holding a riding crop.

"For tonight, gentleman, a handsome young blond. A dancer and singer and actor of the highest quality. Twenty years of age. Top drawer at his agency. Ready for the highest bidder. You may examine him as you like."

Something muffled was said in the room as the men rose from their chairs and came forward. And wafting over them was that distinctive laugh I'd heard before. Peekaboo, I see you, I thought, as the men came forward, gathered around me, and put their gloved hands on me--anywhere they wanted. I was wearing a pouch, but it wasn't long before even that had been pushed down under my balls and I was being stroked by gloved hands. I leaned my shoulder blades back into the X-frame, jutted my pelvis out, and rocked gently against the hands taking turns stroking me.

Yes, I went into erection. I liked being fucked as well as the next by-choice rent-boy, and this scenario was arousing.

All the time the MC droned on about attributes I didn't know I possessed and soon he opened the bidding. As he was releasing me from the X-frame and putting a collar, with a leash, around my throat, he was explaining the ground rules. All had paid an attendance fee. I was sure it had been hefty. One would win a bid to fuck me, there, on the ottoman, with the rest of them watching. Until then, feeling and oral during the bidding was permitted.

The men went back to their seats. They all kept their tuxedos on--and their gloves--but they all unzipped and took their cocks out to stroke and rub against me, as, putting me on all fours and leading me with the leash, the MC took me around the circle, stopping for me to take each man's cock in my mouth and give him suck while he and his neighbors worked me with their hands.

I half expected Josh Hoffman, the man of the laugh and the man I'd seen at the door before he was masked, to win the bid, but he dropped out of the auction early. When the bid was won, and I was on my belly on the ottoman, arms and legs dangling off the side, the MC handed a fat man the riding crop he'd been flicking against his leg as he guided the entertainment. This evidently identified the winner of the bid. The fat man moved behind me and I yelped as he struck my bare buttocks with the riding crop. And then again and again and again, as the men in the circle leaned forward and watched. When the man was tired of that, he mounted my tail and slid inside me, huffing and puffing as he rode me, I raised my head, looking forward--into the eyes of Josh Hoffman, who was puffing on a cigar and giving me an amused look. More than once, when someone watching the fuck, which was participated in by the use of their white-gloved hands on my body and milking my cock while the obese man fucked me, made a quip, I heard the distinct laugh of the master of the Josh Hoffman Financial Services Company floating over the scene.

Early in the morning, when I stumbled back to my room, there was another message on my answering machine to call the escort service.

"Is your passport in the name of Clint James up to date?" she asked.

"Yes, why?"

"$15,000 clear, other expenses paid, for a long weekend in Italy. The week after next. It will be demanding. Early morning flight there. A party that night. Individual sessions the next two days. Return on day four. You'll be part of a pool. You've been specifically requested. Any tips you receive are all yours and not reportable."

"$15,000?" I asked, incredulous, not paying that much attention to the rest of it.

"Yes, $15,000, plus tips, which should be substantial, the base fee payable before you go; returnable, plus a black mark on your record, if you pull out, either before or during. You have to commit or pass now. As I said, you were specifically requested and we need time to negotiate and come up with someone else if you won't do it."

"Yes, I'm available," I answered. Shep this time, I wondered. Or maybe the midnight auction had been an audition.

* * * *

It was the latter, I surmised, when the guests started to arrive for the Friday night party on the northern shore of Lake Como in Italy. I immediately started looking around and listening for the distinctive laugh.

Several of us--the "pool" the dispatcher at the escort agency had mentioned--arrived in Milan on the same Lufthansa flight, connecting from elsewhere through Frankfurt, Germany. We were from all over--from the four corners of the earth. We ranged in ages as far as I could see, from eighteen to twenty-one or so. So, I was one of the older ones. We were of all ethnic extractions. What was the same was that we were all men--handsome young men with great bodies. We were all dressed for show and moving like everyone was watching and assessing each one of us. I surmised we were all high-priced prostitutes.

A fleet of black Mercedes had been laid on for us at the airport and drove us, in convoy, north, to Lake Como. I'd been told that was our destination and I had looked it up on the map. We were driven around to the far, northern shore from Milan, to the side that was close to the Swiss border. Most of the buildings and villages on the lake at this point were on the other shore. We arrived in the early afternoon and were told what we were to do that weekend and how we were to do it. Then we were told to rest. It would be a long, taxing night, followed by two taxing days if our services extended to that. From their description of our duties, we all believed the "taxing" part.