Page 38

“Slowly.”

He looks at me.

“Slowly,” I say. “And I’m not taking mine off.”

His hands hesitate on the third button, then keep going, slower, and his throat moves.

I sit down on the end of my own bed with my coat still on and watch a professional athlete undress in a rented room with the streetlight coming through a window that faces a container yard.

Shirt. Undershirt. He’s white as paper except for his forearms. A bruise covers the front of his left thigh, the size of a dinner plate, unreported to anybody. Belt. Pants. He does it standing, without leaning on anything. By the time he gets to his shorts, his cock is already pushing at the cotton, and when they come down it rises hard and flushed against his stomach.

He stands in the middle of my bedroom floor with his hands at his sides, making no move to cover himself. His cock is long and heavy, dark at the head and wet at the slit, and he doesn’t touch it. He doesn’t ask what to do next. A small muscle jumps at the corner of his jaw.

“Come here.”

He comes closer. I put my hand flat on his stomach. The muscle under it jumps. He makes a sound with his mouth shut.

I take his cock in my hand.

His bare hip is against my knee. My palm is dry at first, then slick with what’s leaking out of him. I spread it down the shaft with my thumb and he makes a noise through his nose. Long, slow pulls, root to head, a twist under the crown. His hands hang at his sides in empty fists.

I work him until his breathing goes wrong.

Then I stop.

He gets a sound out. His cock jerks against my palm, looking for friction that’s not coming. His head comes forward, forehead settling on top of mine. He stands there shaking, with his hands still at his sides. I hold him at the base and don’t move.

“Ask me,” I say.

He doesn’t.

I start again. Slower. I thumb the slit on every upstroke until it runs wet over my knuckles. I watch his stomach, then the tendon at the top of his thigh, then his balls drawing up tight. Within four seconds, I know exactly where he is. I take him right to the edge. His knees go loose. One hand finally closes on my shoulder through the coat.

I stop, and squeeze hard at the root until it passes.

The noise he makes then is nearly nothing.

“You wanted to know what I take instead of money,” I say. “This. Say it out loud.”

“Marek.”

“Say what you want.”

He’s trembling. Sweat beads at his hairline. His fingers dig into my shoulder hard enough to hurt; his eyes are shut. I know exactly what I’m asking him for. It’s not payment.

He’s never asked anyone for anything. Not the brother who raised him, not the agent who’s had him since he was eighteen, not the captain who’s offered him a chair at his table for six years.

I take my hand off him entirely. His cock stands out between us, dark and wet and jerking with his pulse.

“Marek. Please.”

“Please what?”

“Finish it.” It comes out of him in pieces, the way his name did on his kitchen floor. “Please finish it. I want you to. I want you to finish it.”

“Look at me.”

He opens his eyes.