So, Nick was deciding that the guy he'd met at the Monaco Principality youth hostel had been rightâthat the steps of the Cathedral of Our Lady on the edge of the Jardins Sant-Martin park was as good a place as any to pick up men good for the day's expenses. And Nick's resources were down to the point of selling his body, which he was willing to do and had done before during his European adventure. Such a guy was standing in front of him now, looking rough at the base but candy coated. He was expensively dressed in tailored clothes covering a muscular, hard-as-steel body. He maybe was in his early forties and looked thuggish, but thuggish in a handsome, arousing wayâand he looked like money. Nick gauged him to be Slavic. He was probably organized crime, Nick thought, which would be an addition to Nick's European adventure. The man was standing there, in front of Nick, all-American sunny blond, with a friendly smile on a handsome face and sculpted body, a glorious nineteen.
Nick had taken a year off after high school and before entering Penn State, where all his people went and where he was promised an athletic scholarship when he was ready for it to play tennis. Before he settled down to that he was bumming around Europe for a year. They had a name for itâthe gap year. His expenses had outrun the money his family was regularly wiring to him in France and he was sitting it out in Monaco, waiting for the money drafts to catch up with him. He needed cash, though, and he'd let menâand a few women, although men proved to be a quicker and less entangling propositionâuse his body before in Europe on this gap year adventureâand not always because he needed money at the timeâso here he was, lounging and posing on the steps of the Cathedral of Our Lady. Being free to be casually gay for pay was part of the adventure.
The man, swarthy under the elegant clothes, although not uncomfortably so, black, curly hair, with hairy forearms and tufts of curls at his neckline, and what was probably a perpetual five o'clock shadow at his jaw line and on his cheeks, was giving Nick a piercing stare. Nick was dressed as if he was biking and had stopped at the cathedral for a short restâneon-blue skin-tight Lycra biker thigh-compression shorts and a peel-off Lycra jersey. He'd dressed to be noticed. There was no bike in sight, though. He couldn't see bringing one to this audition and worrying about what to do with it if he went to a hotel room with a man. He did bring his tennis racket to give some credibility to being in athletic gear.
There was no trouble figuring out what the man wanted. He had one hand floating in front of his basket and the other one holding a wallet. He wanted sex and he'd pay for it. There were other young men on offer here, but it was clear that Mr. Swarthy wanted Nick. Nick came down the steps and held out his hand. The man reached his out, but as their hands connected, he slipped his thumb under, rubbing it against Nick's palm in what Nick had learned was a sign of a seeking top. Nick loosely wrapped his fingers around the thumb, in a signal of a yielding submissive, and, just like that, an understanding was established.
"Alexsei," the man said, the accent Slavic. So, Nick had guessed right on that.
"Ned," Nick answered, having already learned not to reveal his true name at the beginning of a hookup. The men expected that. They certainly didn't give their real names. The john looked like an Alexsei; the name fit the look. Nick was almost reluctant to hook up with him. He looked like he could be real rough. Nick got a little extra jolt out of rough, but he was having second thoughts, having quickly assessed the man as organized crime. Sometimes, Nick realized, his fantasies ran ahead of his common sense. He was about to back out, when the man took control with a commanding voice.
"You come with me for coffee or beer or wine." Alexsei said, not posing it as a question. "Just up the street here." He pointed to the Allée Jean Paul II, running up the side of the cathedral inland.
"Yes," Nick answered.
"You are American? Or Canadian?" Alexsei asked, as he forcefully took Nick's hand in his left hand and swung his right around to Nick's right hip, already seeming to take possession. It was as if he sensed Nick was having second thoughts and wasn't going to allow for those. He already was being boldly assertive. Anyone who observed the two at the foot of the cathedral stairs would know that the Slav was going to fuck the smaller American blond. He stroked Nick's hip with the tips of his fingers. "Nice. Narrow hips."
"American," Nick said as his thoughts went to the probability that this man was hung. It was his experience that men with big cocks expressed interest in his narrow hips when they spoke to him about sex. It was a giveaway on their size when they did so. Nick gave a little shiver of anticipation as the man guided him up the street beside the cathedral. They were headed to a sidewalk café just inside the Rue des Carmes at the back edge of the Cathedral. It was a slack period of the day and they found a small table, with seats across from each other just in from where the awning blocked the sunlight.
What was it with johns and narrow hips, Nick had once wondered. He'd been given an answer for that, though, and those who had this fetish always seemed to be big-cocked men. They all seemed to like his narrow hips, to the point that some mentioned them, sometimes as they were entering him and holding his hips between their hands, remarking how they liked seeing their big cocks split the difference and his hole blossoming open to take them in. They all expressed surprise and appreciation that the seemingly virginal young man had a hole that would open so well and quickly to the cock. From that point forward they'd treat him like a seasoned whore.
Not that he had much experience with this, of courseâat least before his European trip. He wasn't promiscuous, or hadn't been before reaching the Continent. He just needed more money for Europe than he was being sent. And, truth be told, he found prostituting himself to older men to be exciting. He found that playing tennis gave him access to men with money and the opportunity to be ogled and propositioned in locker room showers. Nearly all of his sexual experience had developed during this gap year in Europe, but it had been a rapid development.
They ordered, the waiter being attentive and limp wrested, making up to Alexsei, obviously not caring about whether the two were in negotiations in his café. As they ordered their coffees, Alexsei taking control and ordering for both of them without consulting with Nick, Alexsei palmed the waiter's butt and talked suggestively to the young man, and the waiter simpered for him. Alexsei obviously was a player and had a lot of self-confidence about what he could get if he wanted it. That just added to Nick's interest and arousal, though.
Nick wondered if Alexsei had been in this cafĂ© before and if he'd already fucked the waiterâprobably so from the way the two interacted.
"How old are you?" Alexsei asked, giving Nick a hard look, after the waiter had flounced off to get the coffees.
"Nineteen," Nick said.
"I'm not sure I believe you. You look more like sixteen to me."
"And you wouldn't be interested then?"
"Of course I'd still be interested," Alexsei said. "But the arrangement would be a bit different then."
"Well, I am nineteen," Nick said. He was.
"Can you prove that to me?"
"Yes, if you don't look too hard at the name and address. I have a Stateside driver's license."
"Let me see it. I will just look at the birthdate."