The Negotiator

When I got back to the hotel, I ordered dinner in and got right to work on the computer. I even called the research unit in the company back in New York, which was five hours behind the time in Birmingham, in early for their day. Where a barrier against information had been erected around the firm of Smythe and Withers, Robert Smythe and Withers, father and son, were people and may not be as well cordoned off as their firm. Hal had been right about vulnerabilities. I needed to know theirs.

In the end, Hal's base vulnerability was the same as mine. He had a wife who was quite active in charity events and children—ones both by the current wife and by a former one. And there was no hint in the public record of Hal Junior fucking men.

The public record also told me where Hal Junior's country home was—in the Cotswolds, a two-hour drive south of Birmingham.

Because I wasn't used to driving on the left and had trouble figuring out the road signs, it took me nearly three hours the next morning to reach his country house. The first people I encountered when I pulled into the forecourt of a rambling English Tudor residence were a young couple looking to be in their early twenties who were decked out in tennis togs and who were swinging tennis rackets. They introduced themselves as Halston Wither's older children, Victoria and Edwin—Vicki and Eddie—and I introduced myself, daringly, as an American business acquaintance of their father's who their father had invited down for the weekend.

I hoped not only that I was bearding Hal in his lair sufficiently to keep him from declaring I hadn't been invited and sending me off in embarrassment but also that the house had sufficient bedrooms to make it believable that I had been invited. From the size of the edifice that I could see, though, that wasn't likely to be a problem. It could as well be a country hotel as a country house.

At the bottom of the briefcase I was carrying up to the front door of the small castle were the photographs Hal hadn't taken with him when he left me in his office the previous evening—but that I had had the presence of mind to snarf up. Those photographs could be used both ways, especially now that I knew that Hal had a wife and children just as I had.

"Jolly good," Eddie said. "Daddy is off on a shoot with that Frenchie he dragged home for the weekend. Won't he be surprised when he finds you already settled in when he gets back?"

"I haven't the slightest doubt about that," I answered.

"You're just in time for tea," Vicki said. "Eddie can show you to a bedroom and then you two can join Mam and me in the conservatory."

It was a piece of cake—or biscuit, I guess, in the British lingo. There I was, sitting all smiles between the newer Mrs. Withers and daughter Vicki, with son Eddie across the tea table from me and with a third cup of tea in my hand, when Hal entered the conservatory all abluster with what he termed to be a splendid shooting day. He was so well tailored that he looked like he'd just walked off a movie set rather than a slog through forest and marsh. He said that Sean Dupre was all in from the day's sport and had already gone to his room.

As I was sitting where I could see the grand staircase in the foyer and had seen Hal and Sean enter the house and mount the stairs a good thirty minutes earlier, I had a fair idea what Sean Dupre was tired from and what else other than stairs Hal had been mounting.

I had to hand it to him. Hal acted exactly like he really had invited me. Only a wry smile on his lips revealed to me—and I trust to me alone—that he was both amused and bemused by my bringing the negotiations to his country house doorstep.

I stood to greet him, and as I did, the two senior partners of the firm, Robert Smythe and Halston Senior, came in from a side door, in their hunting togs and carrying their rifles at the ready rest. I had really stepped into it here. This quite obviously was a gathering I was crashing. Still, the French negotiator had been invited. So, I would press on. The worst thing that could happen would be that my company would lose the bid—and it seemed to be doing that anyway if Sean Dupre was invited for the weekend and I wasn't.

I was desperate, and although I'd been skittish to try this ploy, desperate situations called for desperate means.

Neither of the senior partners seemed the least bit upset I was there and Hal Junior was still giving me his amused look.

"Must you bring your guns into the conservatory, Father Withers?" Hal's wife asked as her hand holding the tea pot was poised over my cup. "You know I abhor firearms in the house." Her delivery was calm and offhand, as if this was an old sore that she knew wasn't going to be salved.

"Well, it's no longer my house, Muriel, and you seem to have moved the gun cabinet. I couldn't find it. Perhaps you can come show me where I can put my gun."

Mrs. Withers blushed, but, having finished pouring my tea, she rose and said, "Shall we go up then?"

Robert Smythe broke in just as Muriel Withers and her father-in-law were leaving the room with a blustered voice query for Hal Junior. "Where's the Frenchie got off to? We were to go for a ride after the hunt. I sure as hell hope he's better at that than hunting."

"He's not bad, Bob. He's tied up upstairs; you can find him in the Green Room, if you wish, though."

As Smythe headed for the main staircase hall, Eddie leaned over to his sister, Vicki, and said, "I'm in the mood for another game. Shall we?" And, with Vicki's consent, Hal Junior and I were suddenly alone.

"Couldn't live without me, could you?" Hal said in a quiet voice, that smile still on his face.

"Something like that. But we have some more negotiating to do, I believe, before the fuller meeting with your senior partners."

"Nothing would please me more," he said as he strode over to me and leaned down. His mouth went to mine, and one of his hands went to my basket.

"Business negotiation, Hal," I said, pulling away from him—but not fast enough to fool him. He knew I was aching for him in that sense. I opened the briefcase I'd brought in with me, though, and took the photographs out.

"It occurred to me that these photographs work both ways, Hal," I said. "I may not want my family and employers to see these. But I assume you don't want your loved ones and business associates to see them, either. I did my research and know you have a family just as I do. It's fortuitous that your senior partners are here this weekend too, though. This should return us to completely equal grounds in the negotiations. So, perhaps we can start all over again. My people have run all of the numbers and we're confident we can give a much better deal than the French company can."

"You are trying to blackmail me with the photographs I took to blackmail you?" Hal asked. Then, before I could respond, he laughed out loud. "My god, that is cheeky, man. Cheeky and bold. I must say I like your style."

"Then shall we talk the deal again?" I asked, pleased that I had found the key to get the negotiations back on equal, at least, if not necessarily advantageous grounds.

"Come, stand up. I want to show you something," Hal said.

Warily, I stood. He took me by the hand and walked me out to the grand foyer and then up the side staircase that split half-way up. We took the right-hand split and then down a center hallway. The door to one of the rooms was slightly open, and Hal pushed it a bit more open. The overwhelming sensation I got when I looked into the room was the color green. A dark, rich green. The next sensation was the sound of full effort, wheezing sex. Only after that did my visual sense kick in to where I could see the young Frenchman, Sean Dupre, naked and on his back on the top of the bed, with his arms pulled above his head, his wrists tied to the top railing of the ornate headboard of the canopy bed and his legs stretched up and tied to the posters at the opposite corners of foot of the bed. Robert Smythe, equally naked, was standing between Dupre's thighs and fucking him with a great deal of huffing and puffing.

Now I knew what Hal had meant about Dupre being tied up and both Hal and Smythe had meant when they talked of going riding with the young Frenchman.

"As you can see," Hal said in sotto voce as he pulled the door to the Green Room to and pulled me out into the center of the hall, "Robert Smythe is still making up his mind about the bid. If he doesn't fall in love with Sean—and he is a very sweet young man, if not yet a seasoned negotiator—you may have an interview with Bob later this evening to try to win his vote. And, as you can see, our photographs aren't going to shock Bob one bit. Now, I believe the end of the hall is next. The Blue Room."

I almost gasped when we peeked into a larger bedroom suite at the end of the hallway, decorated in blue, when Hal quietly clicked the door open and I saw that his father was putting his personal gun away inside Hal's wife, Muriel, on another four-poster bed. She was bent over the bed on her belly and he was fucking her from behind doggy style. Her face showed almost a blank, this-is-my-duty neutral expression. His face was florid, but he obviously was enjoying himself.

"My father and I share and share alike, Doug," Hal said when we were back in the hallway. "So, you can see that my family is not likely to be intimidated by these photographs. And if you think that either my wife or my father will be shocked seeing me fuck another man, I must apprise you that I went to the best of English public schools—as did my father—and as did the men in my wife's family. We have quite a tradition of buggery in all of the best schools here, you know. My senior partners expect me to win the negotiations I take on for the firm—any way I can."

I was flabbergasted and couldn't quite manage to say anything.

"Now, I wonder if we'll find the young people in Vicki's or Eddie's rooms?"

"My god, you can't mean? . . . they went off to play tennis."

"Oh, neither one of them plays tennis," Hal said with a little laugh. "They just like to fuck in tennis gear. And don't looked so shocked. They aren't biologically related. Eddie is Muriel's from her first marriage and Vicki is mine from my first marriage. Now, come. Come to the other hallway. That's where my bedroom is. That's where you can give me your best bid—and I can enjoy fucking you again."

I gave him the best blow job I could muster as he lay back on the center of the red brocade-covered four-poster in the suite at the other end of the bedroom hall in what had to be the Red Room. And then I climbed over him and sank my channel on his cock and, my chest plastered to his, and raised my pelvis enough for Hal to do the fucking—because that's how he said he wanted to do it. Before he was finished, he turned me onto my back, pushed his knees under my rump to lift my channel to his cock and finished with deep, fast strokes.

"That was nice," he said when he was done. "You have much more experience than Sean does. I also like your initiative in not just leaving the negotiations to us. So, I'll tell you what. Show me the notes where your company registers the very lowest bid they've authorized you to make. We'll add five million to that, and if it's under the French company's open bid, you'll have my vote."

"Thank you," I moaned. "What I mean is thank you for the fuck. If you'll fuck me again, it sounds like it's a good deal."

"I'll be happy to do so tonight—if you still want me to after Bob Smythe and my father are finished with you. Both have said they want a crack at you. We can go on to the Green Room now, and I'll ride the Frenchie again while Smythe has his way with you. If I know my father, he won't be finished with Muriel until dinner time, but should be able to visit your room in the night. I think you'll be amazed at how well he fucks. I know I am. You will stay for dinner and the night, I hope."

I turned over and moaned—and then cried out—as Hal started to stuff what he could of fingers and fist in my channel. These would possibly be the hardest negotiations I'd ever conducted.