I couldn’t sleep. The bed was too soft, too big, even with Benny next to me. I felt set adrift, like I was in the middle of a field, an ocean. I was used to cramped spaces, to being wedged in some place. My body couldn’t get used to it. I jumped up. I headed for the gym.
“Hi,” I said, catching Manny in a bicep curl.
He smiled. He was in shorts. I was in boxers. He was wearing sneakers. I was wearing socks. “Hi, Ted. Couldn’t sleep again?”
“Strange surroundings.”
He laughed. My cock throbbed. “Understatement.”
I nodded and sat across from him, watching him work his arm. “You’re rich,” I said, as if that was the most natural thing to say to someone.
He shrugged. He set the weight down. “I already was.”
I squinted his way. “You were already rich and you’re only twenty-three and you’re still working?”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
I rolled my hands, the universal sign of continue. “Please,” I added.
“The money. You heard the lawyer. It’s tied up here. I only have access to it so long as I work for the family.”
“So that’s why you stay, why your family stays, generation after generation? They give you money to keep you at the manor?”
He didn’t reply right away. There was a brief pause first. “Mostly.”
“Mostly?”
The pause returned. He stood. He kicked off his sneakers, shucked the shorts. He was naked save for socks. He turned around and spread his hairy cheeks for me, the pink crinkled center of him winking my way. If this was his way of changing the subject, it was a mighty fine way. I leaned in and took a deep whiff.
“What’s it smell like?”
My eyelids fluttered. “Sweat.” I dragged my tongue down the length of his crack.
“What’s it taste like?” He was suddenly breathing heavy. I joined the club.
I took another lick. “Tastes like sweat, too.”
I spit at the ring, then slid a finger in, all the way, fireworks bursting inside my head. Disney should have such a brilliant fireworks display.
“Mmm,” he hummed, cock now hard and swaying horizontal to the floor. “What do I feel like in there?”
A second finger joined the first, just to make sure. “Heaven.”
He laughed. His cock bounced. I know because my face was craned down to watch, to stare as my fingers went in and out, as his hairy, heavy balls bounced, cock throbbed. “Good choice of words. This your thing, Ted? Most guys go right to the suck and swallow. Maybe to the pinch and slap. To the simple jack and make out. You, though, go right to the insides. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”
“It’s a new thing,” I replied. “Newish.”
I stopped at four fingers. Four seemed to be his limit. Then again, with his prostate hard as granite, and with those four pummeling away at him, I didn’t have time to find out if my lonely thumb had room in there, mainly because his come was soon shooting out and then dripping down over the side of the workout bench, a few lucky drops landing among the hairs that enveloped his thighs.
I took my own prick in hand. I stared at my other hand still buried deep inside him, as his hole clenched around my digits. I looked like I was a part of him. Or maybe he looked like a part of me, like two trees that grow together over time, becoming one. I came a moment later, come spewing out as my head threw back and I let loose with a long, low moan that made my hand tremble up his chute.
I came. I blinked. Guilt set in.
I cheated on Benny. That’s what it felt like, even if Benny wouldn’t have seen it that way. Benny wasn’t my boyfriend. Benny would never be more than what he was, and yet my heart and my head were at war with one another, yet again.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Manny?”
He laughed. The bench shook. “Are we going to have a relationship conversation with your hand up my ass, Ted?”
I nodded. “Like you said, this is my thing.”
He turned his head to the side. “How many fingers are up there?”
“Four.” Even saying it made my dick throb, the last remnants of spunk leaking out.
The laugh returned. It was a nice laugh that seemed to take the edges off my guilt. “I think that’s a personal record.” He moaned as he pushed his ass into my wrist. “And, no, no boyfriend.” He rocked some more. I watched as his dick went from softish to hardish. “You asking for a friend?” I only had the one, and he would not have been interested. “Try a little of the fifth. Just a little. Not the whole hand.”
I grinned. Chills ran down my back and exploded in my crotch. My dick hadn’t yet flagged. Miraculously, it grew even harder. I rubbed my thumb up against the bottom of my index finger, around the side of his hair-rimmed hole. In it slid, just the tip, as it were, then the nail, the knuckle.
“All five?” he panted, dick again hovering, thick, bouncing merrily along.
“Uh huh.”
The laughter returned, a groan thrown in for good measure. “Fuck, that’s hot.”
Which was about like saying the sun was hot. Meaning, duh. When he came a second time, I was surprised. When I came a second time, I wasn’t. I mean, I had five fingers inside him. My brain was working on overload, cock simply on load, which shot and shot, thereby draining my balls for days to, um, come.
I retracted my hand with an audible pop. Manny flipped back toward me, face to face. The kiss was also hot, also nice, leaving me feeling no less guilty.
“You looking for a boyfriend, Ted?’ he asked, minutes later, the kiss sadly broken.
I sighed. “I, uh…I don’t know what I’m looking for, Manny. Everything is confusing right now.” Seriously, everything. My life had been so full of nothing for so long, now it was full of too much. I’d grown accustomed to darkness; the light, suffice it to say, was blinding.
I stroked his cheek. He had a five o’clock shadow, which probably appeared at eleven in the morning. I ran my fingers threw his dense matting of chest hair. This was nothing like being with Benny. Not that that was a bad thing, just different. Different was good, right? This was okay what I was doing, right?
“You said mostly,” I said.
He tilted his head. “When?”
I grinned. “Before my hand was inside you. Before you came. Before you came before you came, the first time. You said your family stayed at the manor mostly because the d’Urbervilles gave you money to stay.” See, two could play at that changing the subject game. Me, I was just trying not to think of Benny. Again, mostly.
I’d been grinning. He no longer was. I’d struck a nerve. He was clearly hiding something if the look on his face meant anything. He stood. I stared at the wall of muscle and flesh and hair, at his sticky dick and sticky balls and sticky bush. My hand missed being in his hole, the phantom ache all too real. Someday, a psychiatrist would have a field-day with me.
“I have to go,” he said. “Well past my bedtime.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
He shrugged. “You didn’t answer my boyfriend one, either. Not really. Maybe when you’re ready to answer mine, I’ll be ready to answer yours.” He reached down and grabbed his shorts, then slid them on, his sticky midsection sadly covered from view. I still felt guilty. I still felt horny. I think I hadn’t felt anything for so long, and now I was simply catching up. “I like you, Ted.”
I slipped my hand inside the back of his shorts. His grin at last returned. “I like you, too, Manny.”
He leaned down and kissed me goodnight.
It had already been a good night, the kiss simply that icing I so enjoyed.
He left me alone. I sniffed him on my hands, cock again roaring back to life.
Too many feelings. Far too many.
* * * *
“Fun night?” Benny asked when I crawled back into bed with him. He was naked. He was hard. I grabbed his pole of a prick and sidled in next to him. I ran my free hand down his hairless thigh. Different was good.
“Odd night.” I stroked his dick. Some people squeezed stress balls. I had Benny.
He ran his fingers across my arm, goosebumps rising in their wake. “The butler again?”
The guilt returned. Then again, it hadn’t really left. “He’s hiding something.”
Benny chuckled. “Your hand up his ass?”
I blinked my eyes shut. I fought back a sudden urge to cry. He seemed to sense something was wrong and pulled me in closer. “I don’t want to cheat on you. I know I’m not cheating on you. Can we just not talk about it?” The room was dark and, yet, I could still see his eyes in the meager light as I craned my face to his. “I love you, by the way.”
He kissed my forehead. “Fine, Ted. I don’t much want to talk about it either.” The kiss repeated. “And I love you, too.” He came five strokes later. I was now covered in the jizz of two men. Hot. Horny. Guilt. Still too many feelings. “What do you think he’s hiding?” he asked, once he caught his breath.
I shrugged into his shoulder. “My presumed family keeps his family here with money, but there’s more to it than that. Something else ties them all together.”
He didn’t reply at first. I sat there and breathed him in. Manny had his scent; Benny had a different one. I smelled like both of them now. My dick again grew hard. “A couple of years ago,” he finally replied, “there was this man who paid me to sit in the corner of his bedroom while he jacked off.”
I winced. I didn’t want to hear this. “Uh huh. Naked?”
“Both of us, yes.”
My shoulders stayed winced, tense. “Uh huh.”
He knew I was uncomfortable. The hug tightened, again. “The man was married. This was his bedroom, him and his wife’s. He paid me when he jacked off. He paid me when he saw me on the street. He paid me when he didn’t jack off.”
“He paid you for doing nothing, you mean.”
He shook his head. “No, Ted. He paid me for the act, but he also paid me to keep his secret. I knew where he lived. I knew where his wife lived. He was always paying me for something.”
“Uh huh,” I again said. “So you think Manchester has secrets, that the family is paying him to be their butler, to stay at the manor, to keep their secrets secret? All of them, all the various letter M’s, they all have secrets to keep, reasons to stay, generation after generation?”
“Just a guess, Ted.”
Seemed like a good guess. But what were these secrets? And could they affect me down the line? And was there even a down the line once my month there ran out? And what would I do about Manny in the meanwhile? And what would Benny do about Matilda?
And, yes, it was mostly that last thing that worried me the most.
* * * *
I visited with Maximillian the next afternoon. Benny was playing tennis with my cousin. She proposed the idea during breakfast, catching me off-guard, in the middle of a sip of coffee. I coughed while Benny grinned his standard grin and happily nodded his head in reply.
“Do you even know how to play tennis?” I asked him.
He started to reply. Matilda cut him off. “I can show him how.”
I turned her way. She looked like the cat who had just eaten the canary. Or who was about to eat the canary. Benny, of course, was the canary. Benny didn’t seem to mind he was about to get eaten. Me, I’d suddenly lost my appetite.
In any case, Maximillian was in his office and I was soon sitting across the desk from him.
“Everything going okay, Ted?” he asked me.
Okay? I was sleeping in a mansion, in a bed that cost a fortune, eating the best meals I’d ever eaten, cooked by a chef just for me, and I had recently fisted—almost—the butler. Still, no, everything was not okay. “How’s the search for my family history going?”
He was sitting in his leather seat. He was in a suit and tie, even though he only worked for the family. He looked handsome. He looked bored. I supposed that being wealthy cancelled out the latter. The former was simply good genetics. “Still looking.”
I held out my arm. “Can’t you just take my blood, my DNA, and see if it matches with Matilda’s?”
He’d been smiling, now he wasn’t. Where had I seen this reaction before? Oh yeah, with Manny. I wondered if Max would also change the subject, if he’d also drop his pants and allow me to enter him with one, two, three, four, five fingers. Did I pop a boner thinking this? Did I mention Max was handsome? Did I mention I was horny the night before and coming twice hadn’t solved my dilemma?
“It could prove inconclusive,” he replied.
“Because we might be distantly related?” I didn’t know the first thing about DNA, but it seemed to me, if we were related, me and Matilda, it would show up in a blood test.”
“Right,” he replied, though nervously. Or maybe I was just projecting. Or maybe I was imagining my hand up his ass, and maybe I was nervous. “In any case, we have a month. Something will turn up by then. We have several agencies looking. You are a d’Urbervilles. You must be related. We just need to find out how.”
“Except, you haven’t yet.”
He shrugged. Again, he looked nervous. Or, again, I was imagining it. “It happens, Ted. Records get lost. Older records especially.”
“My grandfather wouldn’t be that old if he was alive today.”
The shrug repeated. “Fire, flood, human error. There’s always a reason, Ted.” He smiled. It seemed forced. “We’ll work it out. Don’t worry. Enjoy yourself. Maybe play some tennis.”
I cringed. “Pass.”
“Don’t like the sport?”
I shrugged. “It’s the players I can live without.”
He squinted my way. It took him a minute, but he finally got it. “She’s been through a lot,” he said. “No family. Few friends. Too much money, no one to trust.”
I feigned a frown. “Poor, little, rich girl.”
He shrugged. “People certainly have it worse, Ted, but she is your cousin.”
“In theory.”
“At least for a month, then, so why not make the most of it?”
My shrug matched his. I didn’t like my cousin; I doubt I ever would. I’d met awful people all my life; I knew one when I met one. And, fine, she was gunning for Benny. Or Benny was gunning for her. Either way, the bullet was sure to hit me in the heart. “I’ll try.” But not all that, you know, hard.
* * * *
I met Benny after his tennis game. That is to say, Benny was showering and I joined him in the shower. “Did you win?” I asked him.
He grinned. “I don’t know how to play tennis, Ted. They don’t have tennis camp for the homeless.” He pointed down at my semi-woody. “And what have you been up to?”
“Our lawyer said I should play nice with my cousin.”
He chuckled. “Works for me.”
“You like her.”
He nodded in overdrive. “She’s sweet.”
I cringed. She had that effect on me. Even when she wasn’t there. “She’s beautiful and rich.”
“Fine. And she’s sweet, and you’re jealous, and you’re fisting the butler.”
“Only five fingers, not the wrist,” I objected, though the thought made that semi of mine go full-on raging.
He chuckled and gave it a light thwack. “Maybe just try and be nice tonight at dinner. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”
“Or you can simply swat them away and be done with them.”
He smacked my peter in the other direction. I moaned in response. I prayed this was not yet another kink in my growing chain. “For me then, Ted. For me, please try.” He turned around and flashed me his crinkled, pink hole. It looked so different than Manny’s, like the two men were different species. “Please.”
“You don’t play fair.”
“Matilda told me I should always play to win.”
I fought to not roll my eyes. I fought and lost. “For you then, Benny.”
He turned back around. He held my hand. He kissed me as water ran over our faces. He’d already won. He didn’t need to play. Still, I didn’t object when he fiddled with my boner while Rome burned.
* * * *
I dressed for dinner. Meaning, I rummaged through Mortimer’s closet. Meaning, the clothes were old duds from the seventies, I was guessing, based on the polyester that soon hugged me like a cocoon. It was hot. It was sort of itchy. I looked like the hipsters that roamed San Francisco. The clothes were worth far more now than when they’d been bought but were no less hideous.
I had on bell-bottom slacks, grey with blue lines running up and down the length of them. The shirt was blue, blue with grey lines, tight. People in olden times didn’t seem to like their clothes to breathe. Or maybe they didn’t like to breathe when wearing them. I slid on some black socks, leather shoes with a high heel. I was going commando. I looked like a rock star. Or a pimp. Especially with the cap on, a cap with a wide brim, also in blue.
“Whoa,” said Benny as he walked in from the bathroom. He raised a peace sign my way. “Far out.”
I shrugged. “I think these clothes came after that.”
“How do you know?”
I shrugged. “Wild guess. I think hippies preferred natural fibers.” These were anything but. No cotton had to die to make these threads.
He touched the material. “I wouldn’t strike a match anywhere near this if I were you.” He made the universal sign for an explosion with his hands and fingers. “BOOM!”
I tossed him some clothes, green and gold, hints of pink. Similar shoes and socks and hat, more green, more green than even Kermit would be comfortable with. It couldn’t have been easy being that green. “Your turn,” I said.
“You want me to wear a dead man’s clothes?”
I winced. I hadn’t thought of that. Then again, taking them off would prove far too difficult to bother with, and so I shrugged. “Not doing him any good.”
He seemed to think about that for all of a second and then slipped it all on. Or tugged it all on. Snakes should have such an elegant second skin. “I bet the trunk these were bought out of was in a Mercedes.” He winked. The grin came next. My stiffening prick after that.
“You look…nice.”
He pointed at my swollen tool. The material did little to hide it. Or nothing, really. “Yeah, I can see.”
All of a sudden, he flinched, if only for a second, but a second was all I needed. I knew what the flinch was from. I’d seen the flinch before. On him. I’d ignored it or tried to. I assumed it would eventually go away. I assumed as I prayed. I should have known better. Praying, after all, had never done me any good before.
“Are you…”
He held up his hand. “You don’t need to.”
I didn’t need to. I also didn’t want to. I’d been avoiding the conversation. Perhaps he had also. “Withdrawals?”
“They’re getting better.”
Or was he simply getting better at hiding them from me? I’d been smelling the roses, as of late; I’d clearly missed the scent of the fertilizing manure. But it was there, if you sniffed hard enough. “Are they?” I sat down on the bed. My chest squeezed around my heart. I shouldn’t have been avoiding this. I knew that now.
He smiled. It looked less than sincere. “Okay, they will get better.”
“You need a doctor, Benny. We can afford one. Probably a great one. Probably one with a mansion as large as this one.” I shrugged. “Or almost as large.”
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”
I shook mine in return. “Why start now? You and I, we’ve never been fine. You think this will all go away, the withdrawals, the cravings for whatever it is you’re craving for? You really think that’ll happen? Have you ever seen anyone on the streets get fine on their own?” I was trying not to cry. I wasn’t succeeding. I was trying not to get mad, at him, at me. Ditto on that not succeeding thing.
I’d tamped so much shit down. Shit, it appeared, had suddenly untamped.
He sat down next to me, his arm wrapped around my polyester-encased waist. “I think you’re going through your own sort of withdrawals, Ted.”
Duh. Big fucking duh. I needed a team of shrinks, all with giant mansions. But this was about him, not me. For now. “Deflecting again?”
He rested his head on my shoulder. “I’m not used to anyone caring, Ted. It’s, uh, it’s hard.”
“Hard to be cared for or hard to quit the drugs, to forget the drugs, to not miss the drugs?”
A sigh came next. I usually loved his sighs, especially when half my hand was buried up his ass, but not this time. “Yes, yes, yes, and yes.”
Each yes felt like a stab. I suppose I knew all this, had felt it, maybe in my head more than my heart, but hearing him say it physically hurt. I wanted to help him. I wanted to tell him he had to get help or else. But or else what? Who would that or else hurt more, him or me? I was betting on me.
He held my hand. The pain eased up a bit. “It’s Matilda, isn’t it?” I asked.
“What’s Matilda?”
He knew what I meant. He was stalling. Him and I, we were so vastly different, and yet, in a way, exactly the same. Maybe that’s why I loved him, why he loved me. “You don’t want her to know about your past.”
The sigh repeated. “Coming here,” he said, after a short minute, “it’s like the slate has been wiped clean. Like I’m the Benny I was supposed to be, if I had gone left instead of right at some point long ago. I feel different.”
“You took a few showers. You have new clothes. You’ve been off the drugs for longer than usual. But you’re still Benny.” My sigh sounded much like his. “But I get it. When you’re homeless, everyone knows. They see you. They know. They look away really quickly. They shake their heads before you can even ask for a quarter. They shake their heads even when you weren’t going to ask. Here, people smile at you. People make eye contact. They don’t know.”
“I don’t want them to know. Any of them.”
I didn’t either. He was right. He was right about all of it. I was Ted, but I wasn’t the Ted I was before. But was this the Ted I was meant to be, in a near empty mansion, wearing a dead man’s clothes? That didn’t seem right either. Only his hand in mine seemed right.
“It’s so fucked up,” I said. “That slate can’t be wiped clean, Benny. I’ll always be me and you’ll always be you, in or out of this equally fucked up place.”
He fell back on the bed, his hand still in mine, face staring up at the ceiling as I stared down at him. I rested my head on his chest. I could hear his heartbeat, could feel it throb against my ear. “Just give me some time, Ted. There are no drugs here. Not like you can walk to some street corner and find a dealer, not in the Hamptons, I’m guessing. This place, yeah, it’s fucked up, but it’s safe. For me, anyway. Just don’t say anything, please. I won’t do any drugs, Ted. I won’t try. The pain isn’t that bad. Just, please.”
His heart picked up speed. That pain in my chest returned. “If it gets too bad, please tell me, Benny. Please tell me and let me get you help. Okay?”
He nodded. His heart beat back to normal. I didn’t like having that sort of control over him. I loved him; I knew he loved me. I didn’t need anything more than that. Well, okay, I needed a lot more than that, wanted a lot more than that, but I was fine with what I had. What I had was night and day better than what I had before.
“I won’t fuck it up, Ted,” he said. “I won’t fuck us up.”
My head rose from his chest. “I won’t say anything. You and I will just be Ted and Benny, two normal guys who came from California and didn’t shoot out a car window, and didn’t hop a train, and didn’t steal uneaten food.” It sounded nice to say. It sounded like a lie. I was concentrating on the nice part, which was made all the easier to do when he sat up and placed his lips on mine and sidled in closer. It wasn’t sexy; it was us, what we did, Ted and Benny who were anything but normal.
“Thank you,” he exhaled into my mouth. I could feel the usual grin against the top of my chin. Our world had righted, however much at a tilt it was still at.
I grinned back at him. “I still don’t like her, though.”
He chuckled. “I know.”
“I still love you.”
He nodded. “Thank God.”
I had. Repeatedly. “I’m hungry.”
He pulled an inch away. “I don’t think there’s any room left in our clothes for food.”
“Makes you miss cotton.” I hopped up. I pulled him along with me. “Let’s give it a try, though.”
We were downstairs in a flash. Though a flash took several minutes given the vast distance between us and the dining room.
Dinner was waiting when we got there. Dinner and Matilda. “Soup’s getting cold,” she said, smiling at Benny. I didn’t get so much as a passing glance.
I stared at the soup in question. It was green. “What is it?”
She deemed to briefly look my way. “Artichoke soup.”
I laughed. I tried to stop but couldn’t help it. I remembered Giselle, my trucker friend, then the field of artichokes along the highway. “It’s green,” I said. “Green soup. Bizarre.”
My cousin rolled her eyes. “Pea soup is green, too. So is broccoli soup.”
I stopped laughing. I’d eaten pea soup before. “Oh.”
I sat down. Benny sat down. Matilda was again at the head of the table, us on either side, Benny moving in closer to her. I preferred to look at my green soup as opposed to them. I grinned and pictured my trucker friend. She hated the stuff. I was willing to give it a try.
I immediately regretted it. I forgot that I hated pea soup, too. Soup should not be green—for a reason.
“No good?” asked Benny, seeing my obvious reaction, namely a scrunched-up face.
“It’s not too pretty in the field either.”
He shrugged. He took a sip. He seemed to enjoy it. Or was being accommodating for my cousin’s sake. Probably the latter. Me, I pushed my soup his way in a sort of dare. He grinned but kicked me under the table. When she wasn’t looking, I blew him a kiss. He kicked me again, but with less force.
They had a conversation. I ate. The entree tasted far better, even though the company was far from delightful.
“Where does the staff eat?” I asked.
Matilda turned my way for all of three seconds. “Behind the kitchen.”
I nodded. I grabbed my plate and my glass of wine. Benny didn’t drink wine. Benny knew better than to tempt fate. “Uh huh. Maybe I’ll just pop in on them.”
She waved me away. I’d been dismissed.
“Don’t go,” said Benny, albeit with about as much gusto as a bee’s sneeze.
“Uh huh,” I replied. “Thanks for the desperate plea for my company.” I was gone a moment later. I found the kitchen a minute after that. Manny was alone in there, filling a wine glass. “Can I join you guys?”
He blinked. He blinked again. I think I broke him with the question. “Um.”
I nodded. “The master doesn’t eat with the help, right?”
He scratched at his head. “Probably not. As in probably not ever.” He smiled. My cock twitched. “Boring much in the main dining hall?”
“Much,” I lamented. My hand felt alone, like it was missing my fingers. Or Benny’s.
He frowned. He kissed me. The kiss lingered. When it broke, he moved to the stove and ladled us two bowls of what looked like stew. He broke off two pieces of bread from a loaf. He poured me some more wine. I thought he’d lead us to the staff dining room. Instead, I found myself following him down some stairs and then down a corridor I’d not yet been in, my dinner and drink in hand.
“Where are we?” The walls were white. There were photos on it. The wealth of the mansion was suddenly missing, like we’d ventured into an alternate universe. Perhaps we had, all things considered.
“The staff live down here.” He turned. He winked. He pointed at the walls. “Always have. Even before this mansion. Even before the mansion before that one. One family upstairs, the other down.”
I stared at the walls, at the photos, some in color, some in black and white, sepia, then the old ones, when photography was first invented, gazing into the eyes of long-forgotten ghosts. Generations of staff. It was such an odd concept to grasp, people at the beck and call of other people. People who devoted their lives for other people, rich people. Me, now, theoretically.
We walked further. The photos were on both sides of the hallway. High and low. I suddenly stopped at a black and white one, two adults, one young boy. They were dressed in mansion garb, work clothes, also in what looked like black and white. The photo was old, but it was impossible to tell by the hair or clothes just how old.
I pointed. “The boy.”
He stopped, turned, and set his food and glass down. I did the same. His hand was on the small of my back a moment later. “What about him?”
“Who is he?”
He chuckled. His hand slid inside all that tight polyester. He stroked my crack. “How are you breathing in these clothes?”
I grinned. My dick swelled as his deft finger rubbed my hole. “Last pore died three minutes ago.” Again, I pointed. “Who is he?”
He leaned in as his finger slid inside. I was so wet with sweat by then, one minute it was out, the next, poof. “No idea,” he replied. “Old photo. Been up there long before I was born, probably.” He pushed himself deeper inside. I winced. It hurt. It felt incredible. He was playing my game, turning the tables. “Why do you ask?”
I shrugged. “He looks familiar.”
He pushed my pants down. My dick sprung free, hard as granite, leaking. “Impossible. That’s a kid, maybe ten, at most. By now, he’s either super old or long-dead.”
I looked down the hallway. He was jacking my prick now. “What if someone comes?”
“Hopefully, it’ll be you before them.”
I nodded. I grinned. He jacked. I was no exhibitionist, but he had me horned up. “Which room is yours?”
He pointed behind him and down ten feet. I grabbed my food. He grabbed his. I waddled with my pants around my ankles. The door opened. I set my meal down and dropped to my knees, ass up and out, cock so stiff it hurt. “Make me come, Manny. Make me come. Please.”
I sounded desperate. Mainly because I was. For him. For Benny. For answers.
He was behind me a moment later. His fingers were inside me just after that. He pounded my hole while I pounded my prick. My ass was mostly virgin territory. Mostly. I was a top. I preferred being in control, the irony never lost on me that my life had spiraled out of it so long ago.
In any case, I was young. I was horny. And like I said, I was desperate. The trifecta meant that my exploration into bottoming didn’t last long. Meaning, I came in a howling torrent, splattering spunk onto his wood floor in maybe fifteen hole-thrusts.
Manny was still fully dressed, kneeling behind me, laughing as I fought to catch my breath.
“Should I take that as a compliment?” he asked.
I nodded as I looked over my shoulder. Sweat was stinging my eyes. Fucking non-breathing polyester. “I, uh…thanks, and I owe you one.”
“A date.”
A date? A date with the help? It can’t possibly work out well. “Um.”
He slapped my ass. “Stop overthinking it, Ted. It’s a date. I’m fabulously wealthy; I’ll pay.”
It was then that I blinked the sweat from my eyes and noticed the surroundings. His room was opulent, the furnishings on par with my own. A butler. Fabulously wealthy. The questions returned. Thankfully, my desperation had temporarily evaporated.
“Fine,” I said, rolling over, sticky with sap. “I’d be delighted.”
He grabbed my softened willie. “Yeah, I’m sure you will be.” He hopped up. He set our stews on a nearby table, two chairs pulled up and over. “And this doesn’t count as that date.” He ran to the bathroom and returned with a warm, wet towel. He washed me off, then the mess on the floor, his eyes always on mine, boring in, sending butterflies swarming in my belly. So much beautiful blue. “You look like him.”
I tilted my head. “Who?”
He pointed to his bedroom door, past it. “The boy in the photo. Maybe that’s why he looked familiar. There’s a slight resemblance.” He smirked. “Still, it’s an old photo, blurry at best.” He squinted my way. “But…”
I yanked my pants up. Or tried to. It was a struggle at best. “But?”
A shrug rose on his shoulders. “But what if he wasn’t the help? What if he was posing with the help? What if he was a d’Urbervilles? Maybe he’s related to you, maybe the answer to your question of how you fit into the family tree.”
Electricity shot through my limbs. Is that why he looked familiar? Was he a long-lost cousin, a great-uncle, a great-great someone? How old was the photo? I shook my head. “It’s an old photo, Manny, just like you said. Blurry, like you said. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence. Sometimes people see what they want to see, like seeing a face in a potato, Jesus on toast.”
“Who sees Jesus on toast?”
“People. People do.” I’d seen it in the newspaper. One that I was using as a blanket at the time.
He sat down in his seat. I sat down in mine. The stew was cold. The stew was delicious. The company was stunning. I missed Benny, but just a little bit less than usual. I thought of my dilemma. Or at least the most recent one.
One date usually led to two.
What would happen at three?
I ate my cold stew. I tried not to think too hard about the date. I tried not to think too hard about the photo in the hallway.
I failed on both accounts.