“I don’t know. Sometimes. Does it change the way you feel about me?”
“Is that your goal?”
Arden nodded, then shook his head, as confused as me. I drove us home in silence. If I’d known what to say, I’d have said it.
8
the arrangement
We arrived back at the cabin a half hour later. Arden was slow to follow, even when I went over and opened his door for him. He was hard to look at—so beautiful it hurt. It was dangerous for me to fall for a man like him. His “lesson” made that perfectly clear. He was unavailable, reckless, probably unstable. The red flags were all around. I should walk away. Or run.
“I need a shower,” he said when we were inside. I motioned to the bathroom, glad that he was going to wash the john’s stink off of him. I needed one too. “Take one with me?” Arden asked in a shaky voice.
I followed him into the bathroom. We undressed, and I shoved our clothes in a corner, silently swearing to wash and possibly burn them later. I got the water going and climbed into the shower stall after him. Arden asked me to wash him, and I did so with a clinical thoroughness, as if I could scrub all traces of the man’s touch from his skin.
“You have sex with men for money,” I said, a statement of fact.
“Yes.” His back was to me, his damp hair curling at the ends where the water droplets collected.
“Rich men, poor men, they all have their price.”
“That’s right.”
I was beginning to understand his reasoning.
“But you want to be with me still,” I said.
Arden nodded and hung his head.
“Not like them.”
“Notat alllike them.”
I guided him around and backed him against the shower wall. His eyes were wide and vulnerable, desperate for… I honestly didn’t know. Something simple, right? I slid my palm along his slick chest and down to his cock. He was hard—we both were. All of that build-up with no release. I stroked him, slow and sensual and only for him. Arden’s shoulders curled inward, grateful for the touch.
“When you’re with me, you’re mine,” I said.
“Yes.” His back pressed flush against the wall. The john laid tile for a living. Tomorrow, he’d be matching up his tiles, trying to get his lines even, maybe doing grout work, and he’d be thinking about fucking Arden. He’d be remembering Arden’s greedy little hole swallowing his dick, how tight he was, how good it felt to fuck that body. Maybe he’d watch the video after work while drinking a beer and fondle himself with his clumsy right hand. He’d fantasize about the good-looking rent boy who could have been a model or a porn star. What a good lay he was.
“I don’t want the fantasy,” I told him.
“Me neither.”
“And I won’t ask questions unless I think I can handle the answers.” We were establishing the rules. What a relationship between us might look like and what we were each willing to compromise in order to make it work.
“I can lie.”
It’s not a lie if we both believe it.
“I don’t want that.” Franco had lied to me constantly, and I’d hated him for it.
“Okay.”
He leaned his head against the tile, and I watched the water sluice down his neck and shoulders, carving paths over his tendons and along the ridge of his collar bone, following the grooves of his muscles, hanging like jewels from his nipples, spilling down his abs and dripping from the light trail of hair that led to his groin where my hand still massaged him. Water always found the path of least resistance.
“You’re beautiful,” I said, “and interesting and intelligent. You’re so much more than a commodity.”
His eyes blinked open, disbelieving.
