The Start of a Beautiful Friendship Page 3

  “Not necessary, thanks.” He held up the bowl he’d brought with him and settled into the chair.

  “So, Louis. How did your evening go?”

  “Pardon?”

  “The man you left the bar with?”

  “Ah. You noticed Beau.”

  “Hard not to.” It was a fitting name, but even so, there was that restless look in Louis’s eyes. Maybe he was still looking for something.

  “He decided he did not want to play.” It was his turn to shrug. “He went home to his wife.”

  Stupid move on Beau’s part, but that gave me an opening. “Sounds like you made the wrong choice.”

  “Eh. It happens.” He brought the bowl to his mouth, hiding his expression.

  “You ever think of trying something different?”

  “Something different?”

  “Yeah.” I looked around to make sure no one was paying any attention to us. Everyone was busy with their own affairs. Smart people. “Bottoming.”

  “But—” A frown creased the space between his eyes, to be replaced by a slow, sensual smile. “Are you offering to… introduce me to this something different?”

  “If I am?”

  He let his gaze wander over me, taking in the suit, so obviously off-the-rack, the mundane haircut, the nick at the hinge of my jaw where I’d cut myself shaving with a disposable razor. That deliberate nick had been a bitch, but it was in aid of appearing innocuous. Nothing to look at here, folks. Just an ordinary American who doesn’t speak the language.

  “Bien sûr. Where would you take me?”

  “My hotel is just across the boulevard.”

  He flirted his eyelashes, which I suddenly noted were long enough to make a woman envious. “I am… how do you say… expensive.”

  “Are you?” He looked a little old to be a rent boy, maybe about five or six years younger than me, which would put him in his late twenties. Not that I had anything against rent boys. As the saying went, some of my best friends were, and two of them, Pretty Boy and Sweetcheeks, had been my landlords as well until I’d moved about three years ago. I’d even had Pretty Boy once, right after that idiot partner of mine had gotten himself killed, and my nerves were still raw. It wasn’t that Ed and I had been emotionally attached—definitely not a good idea in our line of work—but he was a decent agent, and his death was a waste.

  Pretty Boy had refused to accept payment; I’d gotten them out of a couple of sticky situations—one where a john took bad drugs, went off the deep end, and started beating up the boys, and another where a congressman had a heart attack in Pretty Boy’s bed—and they felt they owed me. I’d never intended to call them on it, but it seemed they intended to pay, no matter how long it took. That was one of the things I liked about those boys: they honored their obligations. But their time was valuable, and before I moved out, I made sure they had a top-of-the-line security system.

  Louis cleared his throat. He was still waiting for my response.

  “What is… how do you say… your price?”

  He burst into laughter and told me.

  Whoa. He was expensive, even converting francs into dollars. “Mind explaining Beau?”

  “A customer who thought he’d like rough trade, but then, as I said, he changed his mind.” He cocked his head. “Are you still interested?”

  “Sure.” I took a last sip of coffee, set my cup on the table, and rose. “Shall we go?”

  He left his coffee bowl, crossed to where he’d hung up that leather jacket—and his lithe, easy movements drew the eyes of every red-blooded person in the café, male and female alike—and then grinned and nodded toward the door.

  “Après vous.”

  “English, Louis. English!”

  VII

  “BONJOUR, M. Blaine. I hope you enjoyed….” the desk clerk started to say, but then he saw my companion and choked on the rest of his words.

  “Good morning, Alain. Yes, breakfast was fine, thanks.”

  Louis grinned at me but apparently knew better than to say anything.

  Hôtel de l’Espoir was an older building, with elevators like cages. Even though I preferred stairs, I hustled him into the elevator. If he was going to be out of breath, I wanted it to be because of what I did to him, not because of all the stairs he’d climbed.

  As soon as we were in the elevator and I backed Louis into a corner, I realized I had a problem—my Glock. If he got his arms around me, he’d feel it and could well question it. An ordinary American businessman, which was what I was supposed to be, shouldn’t be packing heat. I grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head.

  He liked that. I could feel his cock pushing against the spot where my hip and thigh joined.

  I shoved my knee roughly between his legs, spread them wide, and let him rock on my thigh.

  Before the elevator could start its upward journey, someone called in French, “Hold it, please!” The gates slid open, accompanied by a gasp.

  Didn’t people take the fucking stairs anymore? I glared over my shoulder and snarled, “This cab is full up.”

  “Je vous demande pardon?” A man and a woman stood there regarding us, obviously horrified.

  Louis laughed and clarified in French, “You might want to use the other elevator.”

  “Ah, oui.” They backed away, and the gates closed.

  This time I waited until the cab was actually in motion before I crowded him into the corner again. I trapped both wrists in one hand, so I’d have a hand free to explore him. I stroked my fingertips over his cheek, enjoying the feel of the stubble that covered it. He had a full lower lip, and I ran the pad of my thumb along it before tipping up his chin and taking his mouth in a searing kiss.

  He moaned, and I gentled the kiss. “Sorry,” I murmured. Sex could be as rough as fuck, but I didn’t want to knock out one of his teeth.

  “Non, non! Plus!”

  “English, Louis,” I growled in his ear, even though I knew he was begging for more. I undid his trousers and reached in.

  His cock was long and thick, slick with precome, and I could just get my fingers around it. It was a good thing he wouldn’t be fucking me.

  “Like this, baby?” I worked over his cock, giving the crown a twist on every upward stroke.

  “Ah, oui! Yes!” He laughed breathlessly. “I will have to teach you French.”

  “Yeah?” It was an interesting thought. “We gonna be together long enough for it to make a difference?”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not, but it will be fun, no?”

  It had been a long time since sex had been fun. I kept strictly to the mechanics of the act. Oh, it felt good—I wasn’t dead, so how couldn’t it?—but it wasn’t playful.

  Fun was for kids: fifteen, sixteen… nineteen years old.

  I didn’t need fun.

  My hand was coated with precome, and I jerked him off faster, harder.

  “I’m going to fuck you until you don’t know which way is up anymore,” I whispered—it could have been in perfect French, but that would have blown my cover—and ran my lips over his throat. His pulse beat erratically. Rent boys could do a lot in the way of faking it, but they couldn’t fake something like that. He was turned on, whether by my actions or my words didn’t matter. “I’m going to strip you bare, toss you onto my bed, and follow you down.”

  Tremors rippled through him. “But your clothes?”

  “Maybe I’ll take them off. Maybe I’ll keep them on.”

  Louis gasped. “What… what will you do then?” His accent thickened, and in spite of the fact that his mouth was close to my ear, it was difficult to distinguish his words.

  Or maybe it was because all the blood had rushed down to my cock. I angled my hips and thrust hard, brushing against his balls.

  “I’m going to make you decide bottoming is the only way you’ll want to go from now on.” I ran my fingertips over his nipple, and I was a little disappointed that it didn’t plump up under my touch. Oh well, some guys just weren’t sens
itive there. “You’ll beg and plead for every inch of my cock, for me to fuck you so long and so hard you won’t be able to walk for a week. Or want to.”

  “A week? Mon Dieu!” There was no sign of the cocky rent boy. His voice sounded thready.

  “A week,” I promised. “That’s at least how long I’ll have you in my bed!”

  “Yes. Yes!” And just as the elevator jerked to a stop on the sixth floor, he came all over my hand.

  VIII

  AFTER doing up his trousers and giving him a final kiss, I managed to get Louis out of the elevator, down the hall, and into my room without him discovering the Glock I wore in a shoulder holster.

  He leaned against a wall beside the door, still trying to catch his breath.

  “Do you want me to pay you now or later?” I reached for my wallet, but he waved it away.

  “Later will be fine. You… you did not come.” He stared avidly as I ran my fingertips over the front of my trousers in a languid caress. “May I?”

  “Not yet. We’ve got time.” I grinned at him. “Remember?”

  “I do not think I am likely to forget,” he muttered.

  “Why don’t you use the bathroom? Take a shower if you want.”

  “Are you saying I offend?” He looked disgruntled, raised his arms to sniff his pits, and I laughed so hard I started choking.

  “Not in the least,” I said after I finally caught my breath. “But I thought you could use the time to recover.” Actually, I could use the time. I needed to conceal my gun.

  “Bien sûr.”

  “English, Louis!”

  “Non! Français, mon cher Rick.” He goosed me and gave a wicked grin when I jumped. It had to be a French thing. None of the other people I’d had sex with had ever done that. “Where is the bathroom?”

  I pointed it out, and as soon as the door closed behind him, I removed my suit jacket and unbuckled my shoulder holster. I wrapped it around the Glock, knelt, and raised the bed skirt of the bed I used. This mattress had springs, and I slid the gun and holster into place. Then I got to my feet and smoothed the duvet and bed skirt back into place.

  I took my cell phone from my pocket and stared at it thoughtfully. I never turned it off, but… I turned it off. The Boss had told me to stay away for two weeks. If he wanted me sooner, he’d—

  Shit. He’d call. That meant I’d have to check for messages at least once a day. And I couldn’t have Louis in the vicinity, even if he was just in the john. He might be a good guy, but all I knew about him for sure was that he was a rent boy.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face, taking care not to clock myself with my phone.

  Okay, Louis had seen me smoking. There’d be nothing suspicious about me sending him out for cigarettes.

  Still, I couldn’t risk leaving this phone lying around in plain sight or even out of sight in a drawer. It contained my WBIS contacts, as well as numbers for agents and officers who worked for other organizations. I couldn’t risk it being stolen.

  I removed the tissues from the box on the night table, placed my phone in it, and then covered it, pleased nothing gave away its hiding place.

  My mouth tasted of the coffee I’d had with breakfast, and yeah, I’d kissed him in the elevator, but it was only courteous to freshen my breath now. I wasn’t certain if I’d have time to brush my teeth before we got to the good stuff, so I took out a stick of gum and folded it into my mouth. I left the silver wrapper on the night table.

  As I chewed the gum, I crossed to the desk and emptied my pockets. It didn’t matter if the rent boy rifled my wallet’s contents while I was asleep or in the bathroom; all the credit cards were in the name of Harold Blaine, and if he questioned the difference in first names, I’d tell him Rick was what my friends called me. I’d also know he’d gone through my wallet.

  I hung up my jacket, toed off my shoes, and unfastened my cuff buttons before slowly unbuttoning my shirt and observing the beds. The chambermaid did a good job, and Louis wouldn’t be able to tell which bed I’d slept in; it would be a better idea to use the second bed. I left my shirt hanging open and folded back the duvet. The beds shared the night table, and I made sure condoms and lube were in plain sight. Most rent boys would go bareback if you paid them enough, but I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to even consider it.

  I’d started having sex when I was nineteen, just before the CDC first recognized AIDS as a problem that wasn’t going away, but even then, I’d used condoms.

  The shower turned off, and I took the gum from my mouth, folded its wrapper around it, and dropped it into the trash pail. A couple of minutes later, the bathroom door opened and Louis came out, a towel wrapped around his waist.

  He might be short, but he was built. As I’d noted in the café, his arms and chest were nicely muscled. His shoulders were proportional to his height, and his torso tapered to a narrow waist. As for his legs…. I’d never considered myself a leg man, but his were a work of art to rival Michelangelo’s David.

  A thatch of hair covered his chest and arrowed down the center of his body to disappear beneath the towel.

  He gestured to it. “I hope you don’t mind. I used your towel.” It seemed to cling precariously to his hips.

  My cock hardened as I realized what he meant… he’d dried himself off with the towel I’d used a couple of hours earlier. “There were other towels.”

  “There were.” He smiled and sauntered toward me. “I chose to use yours.”

  “Did you?” It took me two strides to meet him in the center of the room. A gentle tug and the towel dangled from my grip. He stood before me, naked except for a fleur-de-lis tattooed on his right shoulder and the image of a woman on his left. His mother? A lover? Was he gay for pay?

  Well, his life, his choice.

  Louis saw the direction of my gaze, gave a saucy smile, and winked. “Jeanne d’Arc. She is the only woman I will let anywhere near my heart.” He raked his own gaze over my body. “You, my friend, are overdressed.”

  I was. I stripped off the rest of my clothes, got him in a fireman’s lift, barely keeping from staggering—he was solid for all he was so short—and tossed him onto the bed.

  I finally got a look at his cock. I’d known from having my hand in his pants that he was long and thick, and he wasn’t cut, but now I could actually see the bulbous head emerging from his foreskin. And so much precome was oozing from the slit to dribble down his shaft that I wouldn’t need any lube to jerk him off.

  My mouth started watering again, and I took a step toward him.

  “Wait, wait!” Louis laughed. He rolled toward the night table, and I got a good view of his ass.

  It was perfect, two taut, smooth, well-formed globes, and I wanted to sink my teeth into them.

  Later. There would be time for that and more, later.

  He grabbed up a condom and the tube of lubricant, rolled toward me, and knelt up on the bed before me.

  “Shall I put it on you, mon cher m’sieur?” He didn’t wait for a response, just tore the foil wrapper with his teeth, grinning all the while.

  Louis had a skillful mouth, and I bit back a groan as he rolled the condom on my cock using his lips and tongue.

  That wasn’t enough, oh, no. Using one hand, he popped the top off the tube of K-Y and squirted some onto his fingers. He angled his ass up and began preparing himself. I didn’t have much of a view anymore, but even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered. As soon as he worked his fingers into his ass, I’d had to close my eyes and start mentally disassembling and reassembling my Glock.

  I didn’t usually have such a hair trigger, but it had been a while since I’d gotten laid—being tied up with work as I had for the past ten months tended to interfere with my sex life. Not that it would have made a difference. Sex was just sex, and I never let it interfere with work.

  “You’re taking too long,” I growled. I buried my hands in his hair, and the dark curls wrapped around my fingers and clung to them. “You had the edge taken off,
remember? I haven’t.”

  He looked up into my eyes, grunted in satisfaction, and backed off, easing his fingers out of his ass. Before I could move, he placed a palm on my abdomen. “A moment, my friend.” When he saw I wasn’t going to jump him right then—Jesus, I knew I was supposed to come across as the clueless American, but did I seem that clueless?—he squeezed some lube onto the fingers of his other hand and coated the condom with light, teasing touches that nearly drove me crazy.

  Okay, enough was enough. I got onto the bed, shoved him onto his back, and spread his thighs with my shoulders. Then I aimed my cock at his hole. It glistened from the lube.

  He whined as I began pushing into him, and I paused for a moment. For a rent boy, he was surprisingly tight.

  “Do not stop!” he hissed.

  Okay, he was a professional. I’d have to assume he knew what he could take. I flexed my hips and drove all the way into him. When I started to withdraw, he wrapped his legs around my waist.

  “I won’t be able to move if you don’t let off a bit.” The condom blunted the heat of his channel, but it didn’t interfere with the feeling of his inner muscles rippling, caressing my cock through the latex.

  “S-sorry,” he stuttered. He eased his grip but kept his ankles hooked behind my back. “Fuck me! Fuck me hard!”

  I linked our fingers together. Maybe I should tie his hands to the bed. I’d always wanted to do that, but I was never with whoever I was having sex with long enough to bring it up.

  Maybe I should’ve asked Pretty Boy when I’d had the opportunity, but too much was going on at the time, and I just hadn’t thought of it.

  I withdrew until only the head of my cock was still within him, and he clamped down so hard I wasn’t sure if he’d cut off the blood supply. I scooped up some precome and ran my fingertip around the ring of muscle that gripped me so tightly. The slick touch distracted him, and I pushed back in.

  “This… you are very good!” Louis stared at me, his eyes heavy-lidded, and he reached for his cock.