Daddy Dearest

        I had the bloody weekend off. By order of the executive producer herself. "Relax, David," she had told me, smiling brightly, "you're working too hard. You've got the weekend."

Of course I'd been working too hard. Sixty hour weeks marching back over the past five years. If I wanted to remain anchor of BBC's World at 6, I had bloody well better accept the hours. All of Britain and half the world recognised me immediately. I lived quite comfortably in Mayfair and holidayed in the Caribbean. The hours were worth it.

Almost.

What was not worth it was I had been celibate the past year and it bloody well showed. I had no love interest. I was horny. I needed sex desperately.

Being known the world over had its problems and the flock of them seemed to have come to roost on my shoulders. I could have my pick of any lad with the least bit of curiosity - and find my photo plastered across every tabloid in the world the next day.

At forty-four, my body was toned. My hair was my own and still it's original dark brown. My togs were Saville Row. I presented an attractive packet. BBC bought it with one of the highest salaries in European television. I only needed to remain squeaky clean - no parliamentary indiscretions for me.

No Guardsman's confession of how tender my kisses were or where they had been placed. No rentboy's description of distinguishing marks in private areas. No Daily Mirror remarks about BBC gone poof or the American National Enquirer deciding to expose the pinking of Britain. It was written into my contract. My zip was to remain zipped and my fully-clothed photo to appear only in The Times. A possible knighthood rode on my stellar performance.

So I had berated the technician. It was his fault - showing the American Navy's carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with Tomcats flying formation overhead when I was talking about HMS Invincible and Tornadoes. Before ninety million viewers. I had waited until after the broadcast to tell the arse what I thought of him and his bloody incompetence.

* * *

I clicked on the VCR and sat down to watch an American porn vid smuggled in past the censor board, double scotch in hand. As the tabs hadn't found a way to penetrate my flat yet, it was wank time.

Before the first lad could doff his shirt, the building intercom rang.

"Bloody shit!" I growled and reached for the telephone. "Lawrence here," I told the receiver as it neared my mouth.

"David Lawrence, the BBC newsman?" a male voice asked. An American-accented voice. A young male American voice.

"Yes. Who's this?"

"You had the American desk up to five years ago, didn't you?"

I was irritated. My privacy was being invaded. But I was intrigued as well. This bloke had done some research on me. Why? "Yes-?"

"Dave Lawrence, you were married to my mother for a year - six years ago." The man laughed. "Hi, Daddy. This is Matt Canton. Mind if I come up?"

I stared at the young beefcake on the VCR spreading his legs for his mate and didn't see anything. "Matty?" I asked hesitantly, remembering the attractive, young fifteen year old who couldn't understand why I had to leave six long years ago. He put up with his mum, why couldn't I?

"In the flesh, Daddy dearest." I heard the hint of a chuckle. "Want to buzz me up?"

Instinct pressed the button that opened the locked door more than twenty floors beneath me. "I'll see you in a few," he said as he hung up the receiver and grabbed the door. I stared at the flat about me and remembered Washington, DC, six years ago. An ocean away. An eternity behind me. I had found myself drawn to my fifteen year old step-son. Increasingly.

He held onto me too. But I understood that was a child holding onto security. I wasn't about to slide into insanity and perceive it any other way. There was certainly not about to be an American statutory rape charge to destroy my glowing chances with BBC. Opportunity and morality combined to give me my continued sanity.

But, now, young Matt Canton was twenty-one. He was no longer a child. And he had looked me up.

A young man on holiday. Touring Europe. He would look up his mother's tenth cousin in Alsace if it provided him a bed and saved him a couple of quid.

I reminded myself the gangly teen-ager I once knew was no longer available. That he had never been available - except in my darkest dreams. I told myself a fully-grown man rode the lift to meet me at the door. A fellow with one thing in mind: a free bed and breakfast in the morning before catching the train to Folkstone and the use of his Eurorail pass that awaited him on the other side of the channel tunnel. I was but a short pause on his tour that would define him as a man back in America.

I forced myself off the sofa and put my illegal vids out of sight. I found a recent release of Hamlet with a young androgynous Dane in the lead and plugged it in. And waited. With bated breath. For my grown step-son.

As I waited for the lift to bring Matt, I wondered what kind of man he had become. What he would look like now. The palms of my hands were sweaty as I continued to pace from the window to the door.

He had been a pubescently beautiful youth when I saw him last. I wondered if he had kept his youthful good looks as he developed into manhood. I wondered if he was still inquisitive about everything that touched his life.

And I wondered why I was so bloody interested. Matt Canton had never given me any identifiable indication of his sexuality. After all, he had been still a child the last time I saw him.

I forcibly put aside the lust that threatened to consume me. My ex-stepson was in London on holiday and decided to look up an ex-member of the family. That made tremendously more sense than what my lust wanted to make of his visit.

The knock at the door evaporated my thoughts into a combination of anticipation and trepidation that had my knees knocking despite my best intentions. I pulled the door open and found myself staring at the deepest cleft I had ever seen in a man's chin. My eyes dropped rather than rose and I was staring at the broadest shoulders and the slimmest waist I ever wanted to see. "Matt?" I asked finding my voice as I raised my eyes to look into his face.

He was gorgeous! Bloody incredibly beautiful!

The face was still heart-shaped, but it was now a man's face framed by light brown curls. Yet, he was also very much the boy I had once drooled for. His brown eyes twinkled as his strong masculine face broke into a sly grin as our eyes met.

"You're looking good, Dad," he offered as I stepped automatically back from the door that he could enter the flat.

For the first time in six years, I was in complete lust. I suddenly realised what had motivated me to come out right after the divorce. Matty. The boy this man had been. My fixation on him.

I had been looking ever since for an adult version of the boy I left behind.

"You too," I answered slowly, trying to reclaim some of the equilibrium known to television viewers on three continents. I closed the door and led him into the living room. "Would you like a drink?" I asked.

"Sure." He followed me to the bar and watched as I poured drinks for both of us. I was startled when I glanced at him to find his eyes watching me.

"What brings you to London?" I asked as I handed him his drink.

"You."

"Me?" I felt my adam's apple jump in my throat.

"Yeah." He grinned seductively. "I've been thinking about you the past couple of years and finally decided it was time to find out what you were up to."

"Thinking about me?" I was beginning to hope. Lust and thought were becoming one. I led him to the sofa in front of the TV. "What about me, Matt?" I asked as I sat on the chair beside him.

"Just about everything that's happened these past six years, Daddy." He chuckled and smiled beatifically at me.

It seemed young Matt Canton was coming on to me. Curiosity joined lust and I was rapidly entering cruise mode. Even whilst I remained insulated. I was on top of the television industry simply because I was so well insulated. Old habits died slowly.

I forced myself to relax. "How's your mum?" I asked.

"I haven't seen her for a couple of weeks - not since we had a pretty serious down n' out." He fidgeted and, for a fleeting instant, he seemed uncomfortable.

"That sounds pretty serious."

It was. She made it damned plain she didn't want any perverts around - even if this one was her son."

"What?" My eyebrows tried to hide in my hairline.

"It seems I'm gay, Daddy dearest,' he told me, chuckling. His eyes twinkled with merriment as he faced me. "I didn't start experimenting until a couple of years after you left us. Mom insinuated that you are too and made being queer sound like hell and brimstone rolled up together with the second coming and judgement day."

He laughed. "I found it was closer to heaven than she was letting on ... I also realised I liked older guys when I started college." He gazed directly at me.

The silence in the flat grew. My eyes were full-sized saucers as I stared at him. All my pent-up fantasies were a kaleidoscope swirling inside my head.

He looked down at his hands finally. "I finally got up the courage to find you. I hope Mom was right and that you're interested in younger guys - one younger guy in particular."

"Matthew!" I managed as he nervously chugged his drink.

He looked up to meet my gaze. "Why didn't you let me know you were gay, Dave?"

"You were so bloody young," I groaned. "You were barely out of nappies."

He chuckled. "I'm way past that stage now." He stood up and crossed the space that separated us. "Are you willing to make up for lost time?" he asked as he stopped in front of me.

I felt my inhibitions melt away. This man wasn't a fifteen year old boy any more. He was one damned good-looking, well-muscled twenty-one year old who wanted a taste of his daddy. I definitely wanted to have a taste of him!

My hand reached out and took his, pulling him to me. "Come here."

His hands found my face as he leant toward me and pulled it to his. I set my glass on the side table and rose to face him. I felt his dick grow against me as my lips met his and our tongues began a duel of exploration.

My lungs were on fire but the rest of me was revitalised. The years rolled off me and I was once again the thirty-eight year old I had been when I last saw this man.

Matt broke our kiss and smiled at me. "I'm glad there's a mutual interest, Daddy dearest. I was worried there might not be. Or that you had someone-"

I put my finger on his lips, hushing him. "Let me show you the bedroom.' I grinned broadly. "I hope that's the one room you'd like to see now."

"The fact is I haven't had a good fuck since I graduated last month." He kissed my cheek quickly. "I'm horny as hell."

* * *

I lay back on my bed and watched Matt Canton undress.

He stood at its foot, his sun-bronzed skin set off by the stark whiteness of his Calvin Kleins. His fingers were under the elastic waistband but were didn't move as he looked back at me. "Why aren't you getting out of your clothes, Dave?"

I smiled. "Because I love watching you get out of yours."

"Want me to take them off you?"

"That'd be nice."

He was on the bed beside me in a flash, pulling at my shirt. I stared with increasing hunger at one of the biggest tubes of meat I had ever seen packaged in a pair of skimpy cotton y-fronts.

My fingers traced over his smooth, muscular chest and hard, ridged abdomen. I could see his long, muscular legs reaching forever down past his pants. My shirt was gone, thrown somewhere on the floor below us. Matt was working my zip now, already past the belt of my trousers; and I could feel the cloth beginning to work its way over my arsecheeks.

I was stiffer than I had been in years, the anticipation a delicious pain at the base of my bloated bollocks.

We lay naked, touching and feeling each other's quivering bodies. We were already comfortable with each other with only the urgency of hormonal needs flowing through us.

I sucked at his nipples, then trailed my tongue down over his chest onto his abdomen. He ground his hard knob against my chest as I moved one hand between his spread legs to grasp the mounds of his firm tight backside.

My lips and tongue moved downward, hungry for Matt's meat waiting for them at the end of their journey. I had sensed how endowed my former step-son was; but, so far, I had been too close to really appreciate it. Still, I was feeling it every time he ground it against my chest. Its width. Its length. Forcing me to accept its size as my lips moved toward its reality.

My tongue touched the flanged helmet of his American-snipped dick and spread across it in an attempt to encompass it. My other hand trailed down his chest to take the base of his knob as my lips spread and sought to consume as much of him as they could. There was still too many inches of thick, veiny shaft between my fist and my lips.

"That feels good," he moaned. His hands found the crown of my head and pulled me further onto him.

I gurgled incoherently.

Matt tightened his legs around my arm and squirmed his arsecheeks again the palm of my hand as he ploughed my face. It feels so fucking good!' he groaned and lunged forward, bringing my hand encircling his shaft to my lips. "Take it all, Daddy."

He moved that he could reach me as my jaw unhinged enough to accommodate him. His hand formed a fist on my knob, pulling the skin over its crown. "Oh, goody!" he cried. "Skin!" He leant into me, his teeth nibbling gently at the edges of the doily of skin his fist had created at the tip of my prick.

My fingers ducked into the crevice between his buttocks and sought his puckered entrance. He ground his backside against my opened palm. I found him and began to massage the wrinkled skin that guarded his backdoor.

His tongue pushed through the doily of skin and spread across the top of my helmet to wash it. His sphincter opened and swallowed my finger. He ground his arse on its invader, shoving his dick deep into my throat as he swallowed mine.

Too quickly, his thrusts grew shorter and his thick helmet seemed to become permanently lodged past my tonsils and down my throat. He lay back on the bed and gave himself up to my working his tool. I quickly send a second and a third finger into his bowel to massage his prostate.

Matt's breathing grew more ragged and his pulling on my dick grew erratically frantic.

He was coming and I couldn't even taste it. I felt his bell end grow and block my breathing somewhere past my tonsils. He plunged deep into my throat one last time and stopped, his body becoming a quivering mass of erotic pleasure.

He pulled away from me and only the crown of his dick was in my mouth as he gave me his second rope of jizz.

For the first time I tasted his spunk. It was young and sweet as I ever dreamt it would be. His hands found my face, cradling it, as they pushed me away from his now oozing dick. His legs still held my arm firmly between them and my fingers were still in his guts.

"Fuck me, Daddy,' he mumbled and bent toward me, his hands pulling me toward him. "Make love to me." His lips found mine and my tongue was again in a duel with his.

Our pricks were caught between our sweaty bodies and duelled each other as our tongues were. Matt pushed me back against the bed and climbed on top of me as he continued to grind his meat against me.

His legs edged along my flanks and his hand reached behind him to grasp my thick dick, pulling it to him and trowelling his sweaty cleft with it. "Where do you keep the rubbers?" he demanded breathlessly.

I pointed toward the night table and he leant across the bed to find a packet. He continued to straddle me as his legs moved down my sides until they brought him to my hips. He tore open the packet, raised up on his knees, and found my knob with his fingers. The latex was quickly rolled over the helmet and down along the shaft of my dick.

Matt grinned down at me as he placed my battering ram at the entrance to his fuck chute. "Are you ready for the fuck of your life, Daddy dearest?"

I nodded, grinning back up at him, and grunted as he began to lower himself on to me. My dick pushed between his tight arse lips to edge through his even tighter arse ring.

"Jesus!' he groaned as his smooth cheeks pressed against my thatch. He looked down at me, his eyes wide. "You are a big one."

My hand moved to encircle his prick and it grew to full size.

He grinned. "I'm going to ride you all the way to heaven," he whispered and began to ease himself off my knob. All the fucking way!' he growled and let himself fall back down my length. "Oh, yeah!"

His dick grew harder in my fist and the rhythm he began was a hard, fast one. He was riding me at full gallop.

"Oh, man!" he hissed, riding me fast and hard. "Fuck my ass good."

American meat bounced happily on my abdomen. Pearly strings of pre-cum were strands of spider webs from his prick to the parts of me it touched. Matt's eyes were closed, beads of sweat formed across his forehead and trickled down his cheeks. His bowel muscles flexed - tightening and loosening - along the length of my slab of John Bull. My bollocks tightened in anticipation.

I rolled him onto his back and managed to remain fully encased in his arse. Looking down on him, I took over the tempo of our movement, slowing it down as I ploughed his fuck hole. Matt moaned in pleasure as his fingers grabbed at my backside, his fingers kneading my arsecheeks as I fucked him.

He groaned and I felt his hot eruption splash against my chest. I was close but wanted our fucking to last - especially with the man I had dreamt about for so long.

"Shoot your load, Daddy," he growled up at me as he clamped down on my dick.

I couldn't hold it much longer. My body took over and I began to quiver. Instinct replaced desire.

My thrusts became short and hard. My breathing was ragged as I pushed my knob as deep into him as I could get it. I bucked as my cream barrelled into my tool and erupted into the condom deep in his arse.

He reached up and took me by the arms, pulling me down onto his sweaty body. "That hit the spot, Daddy-" He grinned impishly. "For the time being." He raised his head and his lips found mine.

* * *

Matt raised up on his elbow and gazed at me in the near darkness of my bedroom. "Thanks, Dave," he said slowly, breaking the silence that had grown between us as we savoured the completeness of our sex.

"For what?"

He chuckled softly. "For giving me what I've dreamed of these past six years."

I gazed back at him and smiled. "You brought my fantasies to life too, Matt."

"They aren't going to be just fantasies, Dave - not if I have anything to say about it." He reached down to his dick and, gripping it, smiled at me. "I want the real thing."

I frowned. It sounded as if Matt Canton was talking about more than a weekend fling. My protective defences started to rise between us. His free hand reached over and grabbed my prick. Despite my suspicions, I quickly grew another erection.

He laughed. "That's better. Now, I want this thing where I'm always going to want it." He quickly turned sideways and snuggled against me. "Again."

A Capital Boy

Bloody hell! I was going to America again. What bloody arse had thought that one up? I groaned loudly at my desk and crumpled the message up, but everyone near me studiously avoided glancing my way.

It'd only been - what? - eight years since I was there last. But the lads at The Times remembered I had called Clinton the winner a full month before the elections in 1992. Now they had teamed up with the lads at Channel 24 (better known as daft TV) - and were sending me to New York and points west for the last fortnight on the American campaign trail. I wondered if my nest egg was big enough yet to allow me to retire. Since I was only 34, I quickly and regretfully decided it wasn't.

So, I was going to America as Britain's foremost expert on American presidential politics.

Quite nice, really - as long as I could stay safely and comfortably in London. Only, I would be rushing through twenty States of the Union in two weeks - on the campaign trail. I would be a bloody zombie by the time I arrived back in London.

Right.

And I was expected to endure all that so that I could tell Englishmen comfortably enjoying the autumn European climate whether Gore was going to win his match with Bush in the presidential sweeps. It was the Republic of Texas versus the Volunteer State of Tennessee - an all Southern contest. The National Rifle Association versus intelligent gun control. Planned

Parenthood versus mayhem at gynological clinics. Yank politics scarcely led to logical elections.

The lads at the top were going to pay - The Times and Channel 24. Of that I was sure. It just took me the rest of the day to arrive at how.

Well into the afternoon I remembered my expense account. Of course. I had nearly carte blanche on the bloody thing. I had been quite careful not to abuse it the past several years, but ...

I called Capital Companions. They advertised companions at home and abroad, short term or long term engagements. They even vetted their boys to make sure they were friendly, educated, and good company. Perfect. Not a lad from the street I'd have to wash before I could take him to bed. My dick erected as I imagined a fortnight's receptive attendance to it.

As I made my way to bed that night, I chuckled again at the thought of teaching my editors to be more careful how they used me.

The service proved to be a bit pricey at 1,000 pounds sterling a day, plus expenses - but were a perfect warning to my editors. My Scottish soul did, however, flinch at round-trip, first-class passage on the Concorde for the lad, so I insisted on meeting my escort in New York. After all, it wasn't like we could actually do anything seven miles above the Atlantic Ocean - so why pay his fare? It never crossed my mind that the service would hook me up with some lad already in America, much less an American.

* * *

I was awake and had managed to sit up, but I was still wrapped in numbed shock. Transatlantic crossings always left me like that - the sudden loss of five hours and having to reprogram my body for that loss was at least a two day process. The joys of jet lag.

It was nine o'clock in the morning in New York and I was to join the Gore campaign's press bus at noon. I forced my feet onto the floor and began to push my arse off the bed.

A knock sounded at the door, pulling my attention immediately from my aches and pains. I pulled on my dressing gown hurriedly and crossed the room.

I gazed at a clothed Michelangelo's David as I held the door open. The lad had no business being real. He was in his early twenties, a few inches shorter than my six feet, golden curls formed a pleasant fringe across his forehead and cascaded onto his neck. His shoulders were wide and his waist narrow. His whole body looked to be tightly muscled under his khaki trousers and golf shirt. Blue eyes studied me for the briefest moment before full lips curled into a smile. A suitcase sat on the floor of the corridor beside him.

"Tom MacDougal?" he asked. I nodded, quite unable to speak. He grinned mischievously. "I'm your Capital boy," he said in soft Southern cadences, picking up his suitcase. "I'm Chris Wrenn."

I hadn't thought of my revenge on the editors of The Times since leaving London, but I was now. Rather, I was nearly drooling over it. I was erecting as I opened the door wide to admit the young man. "Please come in," I managed, unable to stop staring at him.

Did I have to meet up with the Gore campaign at the World Trade Towers? I wondered if young Chris and I could meet the press bus in Ithaca - or even deeper into New York - a long day exploring every nook and cranny on this lad's body seemed so much more interesting than listening to campaign speeches.

I was instantly captivated by how well his firm buttocks filled his trousers as my gaze followed him into the room. I only slowly remembered the door was gaping wide and shut it. I followed him into the room, my prick tenting my dressing gown.

Chris turned to face me again, took in the state of my cock, and smiled. "I'm sure glad I meet your approval, Mr. MacDougal." He chuckled. "That'll get us past what are usually the embarrassing moments in this business."

"You're American," I said, the thought completely off the wall as I continued to stare at him. At this point, I bloody well didn't care if he was from Kathmandu. I just wanted him naked.

I wanted to touch his body and explore it. I was in lust.

His face went blank and his eyes were instantly penetrating as he studied me. "Is that going to be a problem?" he asked finally.

My face flamed. "No. Of course not, Chris," I answered with as much feeling as I could put into the spoken word. "It's just that - well, Capital Companions are an English firm-"

He smiled again, radiant and filling the hotel room with sunshine and warmth. "I was at Kings College the past two years and found out about Capital the first week I was there. I've enjoyed most of my assignments with them - I got to see a lot of the world and meet some very interesting men." He licked his lips as he said the last, his gaze concentrated on me.

I still had all of my curly brown hair, and a twice-a-week regimen at the gym had kept my body toned. I wanted me to be what appealed to him. But remaining in the back of my mind was that one small niggle - that I was but £1000 a day to him.

"I understood that you're over here to cover the presidential campaign?"

I pulled my thoughts from the maelstrom of lust and suspicion. "They told you that?" I groaned.

"Yeah." He chuckled. "It was their last shot and it worked."

I worked my way through the Yank idiom. "You decided to be my companion because I'm covering the campaign?" I asked cautiously. It didn't sound like any reason I would have used to take a job.

"Yeppers. I've got a book deal and three monthly columns from my year of escorting. But I want to be a real newspaper man. And Thomas MacDougal is simply the best. I read your reports on the German elections and, before that, how you showed Yeltsin got elected the last time while only holding thirty percent in the polls. You've been right every time. Learning from you, watching you work - that's what made me decide to come out of retirement."

"I'm paying you-"

"No problem on that score, Tom MacDougal. I'm yours for the next two weeks - whatever you want to do ..." He laughed brightly. "Anything but snuff that is. I suspect that wouldn't be much fun."

"I think I need to shower," I mumbled and veered towards the bathroom and its privacy. "Please make yourself comfortable," I remembered to tell him.

I was quickly under a cascade of tepid water and, though my cock was still at half-mast, was making some headway towards forgetting young Chris' influence on my libido. "Would you like me to join you?" he asked from the open shower door.

I jumped and he grabbed my arm to steady me. He was wearing a smile when I looked at him over his shoulder - and nothing else. My gaze fell to his crotch and wouldn't move. I had never been smitten with any man's cock per se - except my own. They were merely the things between a lad's legs that, with a bit of attention, had him leaning over and spreading his cheeks for me. This one held - no! It demanded - my attention. As long as my eight inches, it was cut and - well - commanding.

"A condom-?" I began and fell silent as he held up a foil packet.

"I always come prepared, Tom," he offered with an even wider, more dazzling smile and stepped into the cubicle with me. "Where do you want me - front or back?" He tore open the packet and dropped it to the floor as he held up the condom for my inspection.

"Why don't you put that thing on me, love," I told him. "I think I'd like to explore the hidden America."

He grinned and slipped past me, his cockhead trailing across my hip, leaving a string of pre-come in its wake. "Looks downright edible," he cooed as he squatted before me and began rolling the latex onto my member.

Finished, he stood up, kissed my cheek, and turned to lean towards the wall. I stared at two perfect mounds of creamy alabaster slowly grinding in friendly invitation as he bent lower to grip the water faucet.

I stepped up behind him. My hands went to his arsecheeks, caressing them. "Give it to me, Mr. MacDougal-"

"It's Tom. Please call me Tom-"

He smiled back at me. "Shag me arse good then, mate," he laughed, using a blatantly faked cockney accent. I smiled back and put the tip at his entrance. He pushed back hard then, and I had impaled him with eight inches of John Bull.

In nearly twenty years of being sexually active, I had never found a partner who enjoyed our sex as completely as Chris Wrenn did. He shagged as hard as I did, his arse bucking back to claim me, his muscles grasping at my shaft as I withdrew and opening as I thrust. He moaned and ground against my crotch, his hands kneading my arsecheeks as I fucked him.

"Jack me off, Tom," he mewled as I pounded his quivering cheeks. "Let me come too."

I reached around his hip and gripped his weapon. I was quickly wanking him to the same tempo I was using to ravage his arse. My bollocks were tightening; it had been too long since I had sex - I wasn't going to last. My fist flew along the length of his cock, catching him up with me.

But he had already pulled ahead of me. I felt his anal muscles clamp down on my prick tight, seeking to hold me. His body shuddered as he raised his torso and leant back into me. His lips found mine as I exploded inside him.

I was still figuring young Chris out as we boarded the press bus and began to ride up along the Hudson River towards the Vice President's next speech.

* * *

A week later and the first of November, we switched and arrived in Austin early in the afternoon.

Clear skies, 85 degree heat, and humidity hovering around a thousand. I wilted - inch by inch - as we waited for a cab. I was certain that I'd lost half my body weight by the time we were in our room and I had the air conditioning unit pummelling. I wanted to see icicles before I would accept that I could live to see another day.

Chris smiled at me as I melted onto the duvet of my bed. "You aren't up to going to the briefing the Bush people are putting on, are you?" he asked, knowing bloody well I wasn't. He leant over and kissed me.

"You want to go, don't you?" I asked and rubbed the back of my hand across the crotch of his trousers, imagining the treasure I knew to be hidden there.

"Do you think Morrow is going to be there?"

I looked into his face quickly. "Reed Morrison?"

"Him - think he'll be there?"

"He's Bush's campaign manager. I suspect he'd leave the briefing to his boss' official spokesman. Do you know him?"

"I met him in England during the campaign there - Tom, this is all so new to me. I'd like to go, but it's up to you. I'm your boy, and I'm not about to forget it."

"A capital boy, too," I mumbled. "Go on, lad. Enjoy," I said more loudly so he could hear.

"I'll be back for dinner and the rest of the night with you." He was out the door before I could think of anything to say.

I lay perfectly still and felt my perspiration become cold. Against my will, Chris Wrenn crept back into my thoughts. My prick began to snake across my crotch.

It felt as if the lad had been with me forever - we were comfortable together, like best friends. He knew my next move before I had taken it. Yet, at the same moment, it felt as if each moment was my first one with him. He surprised me. He delighted me.

Our sex had been far better than adequate, even that moment he joined me under the water while I was showering that first morning. He gave himself to me totally and took from my possession of him enough to sate his own lust. He was always erect and ready - and willing.

There was more to Chris and myself than our sexual compatibility - although that alone was far more than I had found in my last five lovers combined. We talked. Together and with the newsmen on our bus. I had been pleasantly surprised that Chris Wrenn knew something about electoral politics - and that he had kept his own political persuasions from colouring his analyses of what was happened in his country. He had got on as a stringer with several Southern gay newspapers and I had read his articles he sent out to his papers. I liked them and respected his intelligence.

My surprise had quickly become acceptance and, now a week into our tour, it was pleasure at having someone with whom to have a decent conversation. There had been several nights when we had got together with others from the bus and, though he was always respectful, he held his own against men twice his age and considered pundits in the American media.

Thinking back over the week, I could not remember even a moment that I had not enjoyed his company. I realised then that we had become quite closely connected in the seven days we'd had together. I couldn't bring myself to believe that what had grown between us was simply a rentboy's pretence. I didn't want to believe it. But it remained the slightest niggle in the back of my brain. It was there whenever I let myself think about Chris too long.

It was easier to contemplate the near lockhold that the Governor of Texas had somehow put on the American election so early in the autumn. The hounds of hate already scented victory and a loudly obnoxious Senator from the South was again calling for sending homosexuals to a deserted Pacific island. Televangelists were promising that abortion would end and that clinic owners would be in prison with the start of the new year. Physical acts of violence, however, were conspicuously absent; and I suspected they would remain so until after the developing Republican landslide. I wondered if Europe could insulate itself from another bout of American insanity.

I showered and lay back on my bed nude, waiting for Chris to arrive and hoping for a bit of the nasty before we went to dinner.

* * *

Shouts from the corridor woke me before Chris had pushed open the door and hurriedly stepped inside. I watched in surprise as he slammed the door and locked it.

His face was flushed, his golden curls matted to his skull; he was breathing heavily as if he'd just run a marathon. His gaze alighted on me and, in the dim evening light, I saw the haunted look in his eyes. I pushed to my feet instantly and started for him. "Are you all right?" I asked.

He nodded glumly and stood in the centre of the room, unnaturally unsure of himself. "I'm going back to Atlanta. I called Capital Companions, Tom," he said looking down at his hands. "They'll have someone else here to you tomorrow. They also won't charge you for today-"

I stared at him, unable to move. "What in the bloody hell are you talking about?" I finally managed to demand and took a step towards him.

He wouldn't look at me, even after I'd reached him. I took him in my arms and he buried his face against my chest. He sobbed then, a little boy lost. I held him to me and let him have a good cry. Whatever had happened, Chris Wrenn needed to be reassured at that moment. It made me strangely happy that I was there for him.

"Am I that bad?" I asked, even though I knew it wasn't our sex that had brought this on.

"No!" he growled. "You're good. Too good, maybe - in bed and out."

"Why did you call Capital Companions?" I asked when he was only snivelling.

"You don't want to know," he gulped and his body shuddered against mine. He took a deep breath. "I guess I should get my stuff and get out of here. I might still be able to catch a flight to Atlanta tonight."

"Chris!" Holding him by the shoulders, I pushed him from my chest so that I could see his face. "I don't want you to leave." I stared into the blankest eyes I'd ever seen on a living man.

"At least, tell me what this is about."

He wrenched from my hold and took a step back. He looked around the room, his gaze alighting on the television. "Who's going to win this race, Tom? Who have you and I and every pundit in America already given the election to?"

"Bush is ahead by ten points. His spin doctors seem to stay one step ahead of Gore's," I answered. "Who's the one man on his team that's keeping him there?"

"Reed Morrow, his campaign manager. He plays one dirty game - why?"

"Turn on the TV, Tom." Chris' voice was dead as he crossed to stand at the window and stared out at Austin.

I did not know what was wrong with my lad from Capital, but I humoured him. I turned the television on and turned back to face him as the tube warmed up.

I whipped around as I began to understand the words I was hearing. I stared at the state capital behind a man sweating profusely. I guessed that what I was seeing had been filmed earlier.

Reed Morrow had just tendered his resignation and the Governor of Texas had already accepted it. Some Republican member of the Texas legislature grumbled something about going fishing election day because his party's nominee was just as queer-loving as the Democrats. The scene switched to a newsroom and the anchor began to recap the day's events.

A moment later, I was watching Chris speak with the senior CBS newsman on the bus.

"I've been a callboy in London the past three years," he told CBS and the American public. "I was a male prostitute. I was a gay boy in London and selling myself paid for my education. It also allowed me to see a lot more of the world than I could have afforded on my own."

The newsman knew a good story when he saw one. For the most part, he kept his silence and let Chris tell his tale. The lad was well organised, his story riveting.

"I met Reed Morrow there. He was in England running the Tories' campaign - that's the Conservative party, they lost to Tony Blair's Labour party in the last election." Chris chuckled. "Actually, Reed was only my second john."

"Your second?" CBS asked.

"I'd just started out - working for Capital Companions that is. I got sent in because most of the other guys just weren't about to work with anyone as bigoted as a Tory-"

"Why was that?"

"The Tories brought in Republican campaign managers, like Morrow, to try to help them win another term. They'd been in power for eighteen years and had run out of ideas. The Republicans got them to take on far right-wing positions - just like they have over here. It quickly became pretty obvious that the Tories were going for religious bigotry, to divide and conquer - and that turned most of the British off. Labour won in a landslide-"

"You said a little earlier that they were two-faced?"

"Like Morrow." He shook his head slowly. "Did you hear him go on this afternoon about protecting family values? He said the feds should make anybody under twenty a sex criminal if he has sex. Any kind of sex - het or gay. And this is the same guy who wanted me to join him and his new boyfriend in bed?" Chris laughed for the camera, although there was no humour to it.

"He's got Bush doing the Christian rightwing's thing: love the sinner but hate the sin. Him and that guy who used to run the Christian Coalition. What that boils down to on the streets, and the televangelists know it, is beat the hell out of a guy simply because you think he's gay. Morrow had the Conservatives saying the same kind of stuff over there - while he bent over and wanted me in him every night."

"You had sex with Reed Morrow?"

"Nightly - for the month I was assigned to him."

"Was he a good lover?"

Chris laughed again. "Lover? No, he could never be that. Not for me. He wanted to be urinated on. When he was sucking me, he wanted me to shit on his chest. You should have seen the whip he wanted used on him. Reed Morrow was heavy into the dirtiest forms of kinky sex. But he pointed at everybody else, calling them fags and worse."

I stared at the screen as the camera moved to a collage of photographs that Chris had apparently supplied the CBS newsman. Photographs of Morrow and him at parties, at pool side, on a weekend in the Highlands.

My Scottish soul recoiled. A month? At 1000 pounds a night? 30,000 pounds a month? No wonder the Tories still owed the Royal Bank of Scotland 20 million three years after the election. I forced the financial aspects of Chris' assignment with the Republican campaign manager from my thoughts. I turned off the television and turned to study the golden boy from Capital at my window.

Chris Wrenn had destroyed the architect of George Bush's journey to the White House.

Given the unreasoned hatred of so many of the Republican rank and file and America's queasiness about sex, he had also probably destroyed Bush's chances in the election. Gore's people certainly had enough ammunition to dampen those chances seriously and they had a week to turn things around. Chris had injected himself into the campaign. Why had he done it?

I crossed the room and stood behind him. My hands went to his shoulders. "Why?" I asked.

"He came onto me this afternoon," he said without turning around, his voice hollow. "As we entered the briefing room. He had a whore sitting in the back of the room waiting for him, but he wanted me to join them."

"So, you outed him?"

"I'm sick of whoring, Tom," he sniffed and turned to me, his arms going around me. "The sex can be good - even great. Most of the guys I've been with wanted me doing them and I sort of like topping. But too many of the guys with money are as sick as Morrow - the politicians and the preachers. They cut queers down, leaving them bleeding in the streets. But they hire a callboy-"

"Some do."

"Yeah. And others are like that Swaggert nut who finds $10 whores on the street to tie him up and whip him in cheap motels - before they go up into the pulpit and preach hatred for whores, queers and anyone else who can get the crazies out there to send in more money." He sobbed. "I was just so damned sick of it when Morrow hit on me this afternoon that I went over to the CBS guy and poured my guts out to him." He turned to face me, his eyes searching mine. "All of them, Tom. I had interviews with all three networks, CNN too."

"My God!" I groaned, realising just how destructive he'd been.

"I guess I'd better leave then," he mumbled and pulled away from me.

"Why?" I asked as he took a step away from me.

He stood still and studied me closely. "Capital was ever more pissed when I told them. I'm off the assignment." He snorted. "They'll be calling you up and offering you a couple of days free to take some guy they'll fly over - he'll be English too."

"What happens if I don't want him?"

"You're the customer. You can cancel the contract anytime-"

"What happens if I want you, Chris?"

"I don't work for Capital Companions any more."

"So, does that mean you don't want to finish out the week with me - on your own?"

"You'd want me?" I nodded. "A whore?"

"My God, Chris!" I growled. "I'm English, not one of your American preachers with their myopic view of morality."

His lips twitched but he still fought the smile. "I don't know if the campaign would want me coming along after this afternoon-"

I laughed. "Can you imagine what kind of press they'd get if they did bar you?"

He became very serious then, watching me. Studying me. "What do you really think of me, Tom MacDougal?" he asked finally, his gaze still on me.

I took a deep breath. "I think I would like to get to know Chris Wrenn better." I smiled back at him. "I'd like to get to know if I'd want to invite him back to England with me after this week."

His eyes misted. His lips trembled even as a smile began to form on them. Tears began to trickle down his cheeks. "You really mean it?" I nodded, even as I realised that I did mean it truly. "I - I'd like that," he managed, his voice breaking.

I held out my arms and he entered them, his face pressing against my chest.

"I'd like us getting to know each other, Tom - just us. Privately. No business deals involved." He pulled back so he could look into my eyes. "I'd like that, even if means I'm going to bottom for you as long as you let me stay with you."

Alarm bells clanged throughout my brain. This lad liked to do the shagging. He'd topped Reed Morrow and any number of others. He wanted to bury his cock in my virgin arse. I'd seen his bloody dick. It was as big as mine. I'd wanked it a number of times in the past week. I'd licked it. I'd even sucked it. All with one sexual goal in mind - getting my prick stuffed firmly into his bowel.

But he'd been just a paid sex partner then. Now, he was on the verge of becoming so much more. And I wanted him to become all of that. I admitted to myself that for us to be equal, I had to share. I also admitted that I was slightly curious what it would be like. As long as it was Chris doing the honours.

I smiled at him even as my heart pounded in my ears. "I think we should go to bed," I told him. "We've got a lot to learn about each other."

* * *

I lay on my back, holding Chris against me and kissing him, his legs caught between and under mine. I broke from the kiss and reached for a condom in the bedside cabinet. "Get up on your knees, lad. I need to get to your cock."

His face was a mask of confusion as he pushed himself off of me, his gaze never once leaving my eyes. I tore open the foil and began spread the flat surface across the pulpy tip of his helmet. "Tom?" he moaned.

Damn! I didn't need his doubts about this, I had more than enough of my own. "You'd better give me the lube, Tom."

"You're going to have to bring everything you learnt these past two years to this, lad," I told him breezily as I began to roll the latex down his shaft. "You're getting a virgin and, if you ever want to top with me again, you'd better make it an experience I'll remember fondly."

A finger with a dollop of lube on its tip played in the cavity that held my pucker at its centre. I had almost relaxed to that when he dived for my dick and swallowed it whole. At the same time, his finger shot through my sphincter, burying itself deep in my arse. My body went into total rigor mortis and jerked as if I'd been electrocuted.

Trying to analyse what had happened to me once I'd unkinked my muscles and spread my legs again, I decided that what I had mostly felt was his lips on my shaft. I also decided I rather liked his finger in me.

Chris' face began to bob on my prick as his finger began to fuck my arse. Sensations I'd never known crashed over me, erupting out of my arse but roiling through me like continuous tidal waves. More fingers found me and spread me. I was beyond thinking. My bollocks tightened. I was ready for anything. I wanted everything.

My feet were raised to his shoulders and I stared up at Chris in total wonder at how he was making me feel. At what he was doing to me. At how easily his cock slipped through my sphincter and moved into my arse. At what I was feeling.

"Fuck me," I mewled, grinding my arse against his crotch, the muscles of my bowel taking the measure of his dick and welcoming it as a long lost friend. My hands found his buttocks and, gripping them hard, pulled him even closer to me.

"You're a hungry boy, Tom," he said and leant towards me. I raised my head to meet his and our lips locked together. As we kissed, Chris began to move in and out of me.

I groaned around his tongue and bucked my hips up to meet his thrusts. He established a slow, easy rhythm and reached between us to find my hard, leaking dick. He wanked me at the same tempo as he continued to shag me.

I rode comets. I was nothing and I was everything. I was creation and I was chaos. Pleasures and sensations vied in my brain for explanation and description. And Chris ploughed on.

My dick became the heavens and the totality of reality. I was the sun and a nova as I erupted throughout the imagined universe. I cried out in ecstasy. My muscles clenched and milked the cock driving me from reality into greater reality. And Chris ploughed on.

My dick remained hard, riding across the plains of my belly, splashing through puddles of still warm jizz. Chris tongued and bit my nipples. My hands caressed and clutched at his back and arse and flanks. I felt the wrinkles in the duvet under me. I felt the hair of his pubes pull at the hairs of my ballsac. My bollocks rode my shaft. And Chris rode on, pounding my arse.

"Come with me," I groaned. "Please?"

He clutched down and the rhythm changed, becoming rawer and more immediate. His strokes became short and fast. His breathing quickly became laboured. I felt the stutter of completion in me and all around me. I gasped as he plunged into me and held there, his cock growing larger inside me. I erupted. He erupted.

There was nothing. The nothing that was total fulfilment. Chris collapsed on me and I was able to bring my arms around his back and hold him to me.

"Thank you, Tom," he mumbled against my ear when he again could breathe.

"For what?" I gasped.

"For letting me top this time. Could you bring yourself to letting me do it every couple of months or so?"

His cock was still inside me. I was covered with sweat from our shagging. I was still weak from the rush of pleasure he had given me. "You'd better be able to repeat this performance every bloody night we're together!" I growled.

"You really want me?"

"What do I have to do to prove myself to you?"

He nuzzled my ear. "Tell me you love me."

I smiled. "I love you, Chris Wrenn," I said softly.