Gavin didn’t hesitate. “People are going to get this ad in their email, and they’re going to open it, and their mouths are going to drop open at the sight of your luscious cock.”
Gavin’s voice felt like a caress, and Ben’s body started to relax.
“That’s good, that’s good,” Gavin encouraged him, the camera clicking away. “Can you thrust your hips forward? Like you’re offering me that big, gorgeous cock of yours.”
Ben rested his hands on his waist and canted his hips, his skin buzzing.
Gavin murmured, “Beautiful.”
That was pretty much it for Ben’s self-consciousness. Rona returned, and they took the occasional break so she could reapply makeup or fix his hair or blot the sweat from his forehead. Ben hardly noticed. Maybe he’d finally found the skill he could fall back on. Possibly it should have bothered him that this skill involved waving his dick around for the world to see, but hey, washed-up ex-shortstops couldn’t be choosers.
At last Gavin declared, “Okay. Robe.”
Rona hurried over with it and told Ben, “We’re probably good, but don’t get dressed until McNally gives you the word. There are chairs in the lounge where you can wait.”
Ben took a seat and flipped through an old issue of
Photography
. When he heard the main door open, he glanced up and saw Rona leaving. She waved, a bemused smile curving her mouth.
Before Ben could ask where she was going, Gavin was standing in front of him. “So, we’re done with the job. I sent everyone else home, but I thought if you were interested in making some more money we could take some more pictures. They’d just be for me. I’d be the only one who ever saw them.”
“What would I have to do?” Ben asked warily.
Gavin met his gaze unapologetically. “Get yourself off.”
Ben wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on the terrycloth and didn’t look away. He nodded before there had been any kind of actual thought process on the subject. He needed the money. For Kai’s gift. That was what he told himself.
Gavin’s eyes turned an even darker shade of blue. “Give me five minutes. I’ll set up the shot.”
It took more like twenty, and then Gavin called him over. A fluffy white comforter lay across some pillows, creating a cloud-like nest.
“Lie on your back,” Gavin told him. “I’d like to start with some shots of you in the costume.”
Ben’s lips quirked.
Gavin shrugged. “What can I say? I’m full of the holiday spirit.”
Ben got comfortable, and Gavin fiddled with the camera, and then it was show time.
“You want to start by touching your chest?” Gavin suggested.
Ben laid his hand between his nipples, just resting it there for a moment, and then he began to explore. Gavin had the camera in his hands, snapping pictures, from farther away and then closer up, circling around, taking shots from all angles.
Ben started to ease his hand down his belly, and Gavin encouraged him, “Yeah, yeah, give that gorgeous dick some attention.”
He trailed his fingertips along his shaft, light and teasing, because Gavin staring at him was the biggest turn-on ever and if he didn’t take this slow, he wasn’t going to last.
Gavin held the camera away from his face. “Can I get you without the costume?”
Completely nude was different than mostly unclothed, and if the way Ben’s dick reacted was any indication, a hell of a lot hotter.
He started to slip the pants down his hips, but Gavin called out urgently, “Wait! Do that slower.” He knelt down, and the camera whirred away as Ben undressed as deliberately as possible.
“You are so fucking hot,” Gavin muttered.
Ben wrapped his palm around his dick and thrust, seriously getting into it.
“Yeah, yeah, like that. Do you want to open your legs for me?”
Not surprisingly, Ben found that he did. Gavin stayed on his knees, sliding closer, camera pointed at Ben’s face. “I can’t wait to see what you look like when you come,” Gavin said, sounding so very, very dirty.
Ben arched his back and pushed up into his fist. He
really
liked a dirty-talking Gavin.
“Do you finger yourself when you get off?”
Ben nodded, and Gavin passed him a tube of lube. Ben soon had two fingers in his ass and an even tighter grip on his cock. He felt totally exposed, not that he minded particularly. Oh, hell, who was he kidding? Nothing had ever been a bigger turn-on. Still, he’d always been a two-way street kind of guy, and he figured Gavin owed him a little reciprocity.
“You should tell me something,” he said breathlessly. “About yourself.”
Gavin raised an eyebrow. “That’s what you think, huh?”
Ben nodded, grinding down onto his fingers. “Mm-hmm.”
Gavin stared for a moment, spots of color burning high in his cheeks, and then he went back to snapping pictures. “What do want to know?”
Ben shrugged. “Something. Anything.”
Gavin’s mouth lifted at the corners. “Oh, I see. A little quid pro quo.” He crouched down, to take some shots from a low angle. “Well, let’s see. I have a rotten temper and an anti-social personality. At least, that’s what most of my exes will tell you. I drink Scotch and eat red meat, and if you’re a vegan, please, God, just keep it to yourself. I came to L.A. to photograph a rare lotus, go figure, and ended up the photog to the flesh industry.” His voice dropped into a gravelly octave. “And you’re the hottest fucking thing I’ve seen in forever. A little shy and totally shameless. I like that in a guy.”
Gavin’s blunt appreciation put Ben in the mood to be even more shameless. He spread his legs wider, fucked his hand harder. “Do you do this a lot?”
Gavin shook his head. “Being a walking cliché hurts my pride. So I don’t fuck my models. Don’t get personal with them. But there you were, so damned pretty, your dick standing up just because I looked at you. And I couldn’t resist. I’m going to jerk off to these pictures until I go blind.”
“You have a dirty mouth,” Ben told him.
Gavin smiled broadly. “That’s actually one of my good points.”
He knelt right next to Ben’s shoulder, and Ben could see the erection pressed against the tight black fabric of his pants.
“Being a cliché isn’t the worse thing in the world.” The words were out of his mouth before he had a chance to consider them.
Mixing business and pleasure in this situation probably wasn’t the smart way to go. It was unprofessional, and the whole point of embarking on the nude male model phase of his life was to
win Kai back
.
Then again… Ben never had been what you’d call a smart decision-maker.
He reached out to cup Gavin’s dick through his pants. “Are you going to put that camera down or what?”
Gavin went still, a strained expression on his face: temptation and lust and rapidly diminishing self-control. Ben reached for the camera and put it down himself. The entire afternoon had been foreplay, and Ben preferred cutting right to the chase. He was all over Gavin in an instant, pulling at his clothes, kissing like he had no intention of ever coming up for air. He tossed Gavin’s pants and shirt and underwear into a heap beside the discarded costume.
He kissed across Gavin’s chest and worried his nipples, again and again because Gavin gasped so prettily. He glanced up, grinning. “Do you like getting your cock sucked?”
“Fuck,” Gavin said, teeth clenched, his cock jerking as Ben took it in hand.
Ben grinned even wider. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”
He’d been fourteen the first time he’d gone down on a guy: Lester Biggs, the number one starter on the Westland High baseball team, an adrenaline-fueled impulse in the showers after a 3-2 win over their arch rival. Lester had looked kind of skittish when it was done. Ben, on the other hand, had experienced perhaps the most important epiphany of his life; he fucking
loved
sucking cock.
There was a flutter of excitement in his stomach as he darted out his tongue, swirled it experimentally around the head of Gavin’s dick.
“God,” Gavin moaned.
Ben smiled. This was always the best part, the desperate little noises that came streaming out of a guy when he had an eager mouth on his cock. He gave Gavin’s dick a squeeze, wrapped his lips around it, and set to work to see how many more sounds he could pull out of Gavin. He got a throaty murmur of encouragement when he started to suck, a high-pitched gasp when he traced patterns along the shaft with his tongue, a desperate “oh fuck, oh fuck” when he used the delicate edge of teeth on the scar where Gavin had been cut as a baby.
“Ben.” Gavin’s chest heaved with his labored breath. His thighs trembled. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to come.”
Ben laughed around his cock, and this earned him something that could reasonably be called a wail.
Gavin sunk his fingers into Ben’s hair, pulling him off. “I’m serious.” He hooked his leg behind Ben’s knee and flipped him over onto his back, climbing on top. “If I come, I can’t fuck you.”
“Shit!” Ben banged his head against the floor.
Gavin took the opportunity to bite him on the neck. “That’s a yes, right?”
“Yes,” Ben panted. “Yes! Just—” He spread his legs wider.
“Bossy.” Gavin licked at Ben’s nipple. “I like that in a guy.”
“Yeah?” Ben pushed at his shoulders. “How do you feel about impatience?”
Gavin laughed. “I completely relate to it.” He ran a hand down Ben’s side, his fingers tracing muscles. “You have the most beautiful obliques I’ve ever seen.”
“Years of playing shortstop.”
Gavin’s forehead scrunched up. “That’s… football?”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Baseball. Wait.” He frowned. “So, you don’t give a shit about sports?”
Gavin shrugged. “Not unless it’s hockey. What can I say? I’m Canadian.” He licked a hot stripe across Ben’s belly. “Is that going to be a problem?” He glanced up.
Ben shivered, shaking his head emphatically. He couldn’t remember the last person who’d wanted him just for him, not because he was a jock. He grabbed at Gavin’s shoulders. “Talking when you’re supposed to be fucking me, now
that’s
a problem.”
Gavin’s mouth twisted into a smile. It wasn’t a very nice smile. Ben’s cock jerked against his belly. This didn’t escape Gavin’s notice, and smugness sparked in his eyes as he reached for the lube. Condoms materialized from somewhere, as if Gavin were a porn-minded Boy Scout, always prepared to fuck. He rolled one on, slicked himself, lifted Ben’s hips and entered him in one stroke.
“Fuck!” It had been… Ben didn’t know how long since he’d had sex like this, rough and desperate and so very necessary. He wrapped his legs around Gavin’s waist, gripping tightly.
Gavin pulled out and thrust back in. “I want to do things to you.” He sucked on Ben’s neck, right at the place where Ben’s pulse pounded, and then he started to whisper into Ben’s ear, going into some detail about what he had planned.
He really did have one hell of a dirty mouth.
* * *
Almost
four hours later they finally peeled themselves up from the floor and got dressed. Ben was boneless and fucked out, but sadly, still susceptible to guilt.
“I have a boyfriend,” he blurted out. “Or at least I did. I’m trying to get him back. That’s why I took this job. Um. Not that you would have guessed that from what just happened.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what I’m saying here.”
There was just a moment’s pause before Gavin shrugged. “Hey, it was just some harmless fun, right?”
“Yeah,” Ben agreed half-heartedly. Images flashed back to him: Gavin’s legs draped over his shoulders, Gavin’s hands clenched in the comforter, his every response telegraphed on his expressive face. “It was really, really—” He made himself stop talking.
He couldn’t stop himself from trying to remember the last time he and Kai had had sex that made him feel like he’d lost brain cells in the process. Not recently, that was for sure.
“So let me give you this.” Gavin walked over to a battered old desk pushed up against the wall and came back with an envelope.
Ben held up his hands. “No, no. I couldn’t.” He’d arrived at the nude-male-model stage of desperate career options, not the man-whore stage. It was a subtle but important distinction.
“It’s for the pictures, the standard fee I pay all my models,” Gavin said firmly. “Not for the—will you just take it?”
If Ben hadn’t needed the money quite so badly, he would have drawn a line, taken a stand. Sadly, he was penniless. “Thanks.” He looked down at his feet, feeling incredibly awkward. “So, um, see you around?”
Not that he probably would. Or
should
, if he was at all serious about getting Kai back. It was just one of those things people said, right?
Gavin’s mouth twisted ironically. “Sure. See you around.”
Ben headed for the door, but he couldn’t help a glance back. Gavin watched him intently. Ben swallowed the lump in his throat that had no business being there. He got on the elevator and went down to the dingy lobby, climbed back on the bus and rode home.
For something that had been just a little harmless fun, he felt strangely at a loss.
* * *
In the
days that followed, Ben was forced to accept that he seemed to be pining for Gavin, as ridiculous as that was considering the man was practically a stranger. Ben would take a mental vacation in the middle of whatever he was doing—making toast, vacuuming the crappy carpet in his crappy apartment, confabulating a resume for his new career as a nude male model—and a home movie would start playing in his head, a highlight reel of their sexual escapades from that day in the studio. It was distracting, but at least it took his mind off the fact that his cock would soon be on display in a million strangers’ inboxes.
“They’ll blur your face,” Gavin had promised him. “They want all the focus on your cock, trust me.”
Ben hadn’t found that especially reassuring.
To fend off the mounting panic that he was going to boot up his computer one day and find the pornographic spam in his own inbox, he tried to concentrate on Operation Get Kai Back. Although to be honest, he didn’t feel quite the same urgency about it that he once had. Still, it was a plan, and in his current rudderless condition, he needed something to cling to. He gathered up the cash he’d made from Gavin and headed off to the bus stop. The vintage shop with the ugly French whatever-whatever was on the other side of town.