"This gentleman would like to see the special collection," Gabriel said. "There's someone up at the front desk who wants to buy. Could you see to this gentleman's needs?"
Kurt Chase had been on a ladder shelving books high in a case midway down the depth of the Hanson Street Bookstore in the old town of Easton, Maryland. The corridor narrowed here midway down the depth of the bookstore, with rooms on either side before opening up again in the back. It was a traditional-style bookstore, with wooden bookcases set against wood-paneled walls, white- and black-checked tiles on the floor, and soft classical music in the background. Looking down from the ladder, Kurt focused on the man his older partner, Gabriel, had brought to him for the first time. Suddenly seeing him like this almost made Kurt swallow his tongue. He always assessed men as possible sex partners and even more so of late as his sex time with the fifty-eight-year-old Gabriel Lockwood had been tapering off. At twenty-seven, Kurt was at the height of his sexual needs.
This man was gorgeous in the way Kurt liked the best: he was dark--East European or Arabic?--handsome in a rugged, dangerous sort of way, and heavily muscled. Beyond that he already was carrying a book on sailboat construction. Kurt was very much into sailboats. He had one at the Miles River-shore house he and Gabriel shared.
"The special section is just over there," Kurt said, looking around the store to make sure there weren't any customers watching. "I'm sure you realize that in a small historical town like this, we keep the existence of this collection on a close-hold basis," He said.
The Mideastern man smiled. "Yes, I'm surprised you have such books on offer at all" he said.
"The truth is that these are what keeps the bookstore afloat," Kurt said. "Men come from the three surrounding states just to see this collection. Most of such offerings are in e-books. But there still are people who want the visceral enjoyment of turning pages and appreciate these for their collection value."
"I'm more curious about the collection itself--and those who would maintain one," the man answered, giving Kurt a look that indicated that he was interested in other men as well--and had a definite interest in Kurt. "Where I live is not a good place to collect books."
"Alas, that's the way it is with most men," Kurt said. "That's why the e-book revolution caused a burgeoning of offerings in this book category. The books could be kept in secret files on computers. They didn't have to be put on bookcases or discarded."
Kurt stumbled coming down off the ladder and the man caught him, holding him perhaps a couple of seconds longer than he needed to before releasing him on his feet on the floor. Both men looked flustered.
"The door to the special collections room is just across, over here," Kurt said.
"Where?" the man asked, not seeing anything but bookcase. But Kurt reached over and pushed a button on the side of the frame of a bookcase in the corridor between the shop's two main rooms, and the case opened to show that the space across from the office in the center of the shop was another bookroom.
"Ah, clever. Another display room," the man said, surprised.
"Yes, but not just any display room," Kurt answered, gesturing for the men to enter and then closing the door behind them. This side of the door was a bookcase as well. Books were displayed on the shelves, but there were DVDs and photo collections as well. There also was a collection of sex toys. The man picked a glass dildo up and ran his fingers over it as he walked around the perimeter of the room. His attention went from a book here and there and back to Kurt.
"I hardly know what to look for," he said. "It seems extra taboo to have an actual paperback of a gay male novel in hand. I think I'd like to buy one. But I don't know what to buy. Perhaps you could give me a recommendation. Or aren't you?"
"What do you like to read in general. The sex part would just be an add on to what you already like to read. Scifi? Extreme BDSM? Gay Romance? Historical?"
"Historical, I think. But beyond that..."
"You've already picked out a book on sailboat construction. Do you like nautical books?"
"Yes, I guess I do."
"Here's one you might enjoy, then," Kurt said, picking up a copy of the novel
Shores of Tripoli
, with a setting of the Barbary Coast pirates of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Mediterranean, which the United States fought during Thomas Jefferson's presidency. "This combines sailing and history. It's by an author, Dirk Hessian, who specializes in gay male historicals. Have you heard of him?"
"A pen name for the prolificate novelist, habu, isn't he?" the man said. "Yes, I have heard of him. And, yes, I'll take that one then."
The bookcase door opened at that point, and Gabriel was standing there with another customer--a middle-aged man, on the hefty side, who could be anything from a banker to a high school principal. In an case, the man was a bit nervous about being there, but he wanted to be in that section of the bookstore badly enough to tough it out.
"Perhaps you can show this gentleman around the special collection, Kurt." Then, seeing that the man Kurt already was helping had a copy of
Shores of Tripoli
in hand already, he said. "I see you've found a book. One of our bestsellers. If you have, I'll be happy to ring you up."
And with that, the man was moving to the front of the store with Gabriel, and Kurt had someone entirely different--a rather skittish customer--who needed to be introduced to the collection.
When Kurt had shown the new customer around and disengaged as quickly as he could to come to the front of the store, Gabriel was alone at the cash register.
"He's gone," Kurt remarked.
"Who? Oh, yes, the Turkish hunk. Yes, he's gone. Quite good looking, wasn't he?"
"How do you know he was Turkish? Did you get his name? Did he use a credit card?"
"I was born in the Levant," Gabriel said. "I can tell a Turk from a Greek or Syrian. He paid cash. I didn't get a name. Why, did he particularly arouse you?"
"No. I was just curious what nationality he was," Kurt said. Gabriel wasn't normally the jealous type. But Gabriel had been quite strange of late and their sex life had taken a dive. The used to be able to talk openly about other men who aroused them, but Kurt wasn't sure Gabriel's mood of late welcomed that.
But, yes, the Turk had aroused him sexually. Gabriel hadn't been giving it to him--at least not all the way--for months. It wasn't hard for Kurt to be aroused by another man. He was in heat and was frustrated.
And, yes, the Turk had been a hunk and a half. He also was conversant with modern gay novels. He must be a player.
* * * *
For five years Kurt Chase and Gabriel Lockwood had shared an early nineteenth-century, three-story wood saltbox mansion facing and on the shore of the Miles River about a fifteen-minute drive from the Easton bookstore toward St. Michaels, near where the river entered the Chesapeake Bay. The three-story portion of the house faced the water. The house and grounds had been well-maintained for two hundred years and wings and dependencies had been added as current comfort needs dictated. Kurt's twenty-foot sailboat, the love of the young man's life, was docked right in front of the house.
The interest in sailboats is what had brought the two together. Whereas the bookstore in Easton was Kurt's business interest, Gabriel owned a sailboat repair yard on the banks of the Miles River on the other side of St. Michaels. They had been living just a few miles apart on the shore of the Miles when they met in New York at a sailboat convention. They found each other compatible, the vast age difference not being an issue with them and Gabriel being a top and Kurt a submissive. What started as an intended one-night stand in New York spun out to cohabitation on the banks of the Miles River, which had proved an amicable and compatible relationship.
Issues had begun to creep in only recently. Kurt was highly sexed and desired frequent laying. Gabriel had had no trouble accommodating this until recent months, when he'd started to tire short of mutual anal-sex lift off. The change had been so pronounced that Kurt was afraid that Gabriel had found someone else to fuck and that their arrangement was just not working anymore.
It was thus that later that night as they lay beside each other on the master bedroom bed in the Miles River colonial mansion in the exclusive Arcadia Shores area and Kurt was listening to Gabriel, turned from him on the bed, snore, that Kurt was going over their assets. After five years, what was his, what was Gabriel's, and what had been acquired by both of them and thus would need to be split?
Kurt didn't want a split. Gabriel had almost completely satisfied him in sex and fully so as a companion and a work partner for five years. And, as an older man just delighted that a young honey like Kurt would accept him, Gabriel had always been understanding and tolerant of the times Kurt had gone with other men for variety and a short, meaningless fling.
He really couldn't complain about tonight. Gabriel had made sure that Kurt had gotten off. It just hadn't been full anal sex. They had cuddled and drunk wine, discussing the day's activities and the customers who had come to the bookstore, and were sitting in Anderondek chairs on the bank of the river and watching the sunset. Then after a steak dinner prepared by Gabriel, the older man had recognized that the younger one was in heat, and had slowly moved into making out with him on a sofa while they watched a football game on the TV that neither of them was paying attention to.
What moved from Gabriel hovering over a disrobed Kurt and moving his lips around the young man's face and down onto his chest while he slow jacked Kurt's cock, to Gabriel moving his mouth down Kurt's chest, belly, and pubes, to taking Kurt's shaft in his mouth and sucking his cock had gone to what Kurt considered premature completion.
Running his fingers into Gabriel's wavy salt-and-pepper head hair and making some effort to pulling the older man's mouth off his cock, Kurt warned, "You'll need to pull back or you'll bring me off with just your mouth."
They had discussed this before in recent weeks. Kurt enjoyed the cock sucking, but he didn't consider the sex completed unless and until there had been anal sex. He hadn't gotten anal sex in weeks.
And he didn't get anal sex now.
