I stood on the observation balcony and watched the people deplaning off the commuter jet at the Roanoke, Virginia, airport. It would take the baggage long enough to make it on the carousel in the arrivals hall that I could play my little game here and have time to get down there before this Metgev guy would be looking for me. That was the name I'd been given and that I'd have neatly printed in large, bold letters on the placard I held in my hand. Paul Metgev. That wasn't really his name, but then that was part of the game.
He'd come from London to Dulles, up near Washington, D.C., and then had to get on a commuter flight to get down to Roanoke. So he'd be bedraggled. There weren't that many on the flight, and a few of them were women—dressed in business suits, so undoubtedly on business of some sort. Of the men, only a few were likely. There were college students—a couple of tennis players. I don't know if they were from Virginia Tech or either of the two colleges in Lexington, fifty miles to the northwest, the Virginia Military Institute or Washington and Lee. They looked too casually dressed to be from VMI. That's where I was taking this guy—to Lexington. So, he had another fifty miles of road trip, with a couple of viewings scheduled on the way. He'd be too tired to be a handful.
A couple of the other men looked possible. There was a tall, beefy guy, maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, who looked interesting and somehow familiar. But he wasn't dressed for the part. The dude who had these kind of services from the real estate firm and who was looking at the type of property I was showing him today and tomorrow morning had money. The beefcake guy was wearing torn jeans, fitting his muscular legs tightly, and a loose, plaid wool shirt over a white, long-sleeved Henley. The coverage indicated he'd come from a colder climate than southern Virginia, and that tempted me to keep him in the mix for the game, but he just didn't fit. No. As usual, I was looking for someone middle aged, overweight, and expensive looking—but probably a bit hung over, out of sorts, and rumpled because of the tandem flights from London and the time change.
I picked out two, did an eeny, meeny, miny, moe between them, and decided what my reward or punishment would be on which it was. If I'd picked a loser—and as prospects, both were closer to loser than god—my punishment would be to show him a very good time. If I won, more of my fee for this job would go toward that Fiat Spyder 124 convertible I wanted than I'd settled on in my mind. And I'd be getting a pretty penny for this job.
The passengers had entered the building under the observation deck where I was standing, so I made haste to the baggage claim area. I stood on the periphery holding my sign, along with others holding signs. The passengers were more interested in retrieving their luggage from the carousel, which seemed still to be trundling baggage around the metal oval from a previous flight, than they were in meeting up with anyone. The two men I had in the bet weren't looking over where the sign holders were standing. But someone else was as he came out of the men's room and strode past the carousel, carrying a heavy leather suit bag over his shoulder with little apparent effort. I hadn't given him much of my attention when they were deplaning on the tarmac, but, yes, he was carrying a suit bag then. He must not have checked any bags.
As he walked, he was scanning the crowd, and when he saw the sign I was carrying, he nodded in recognition. I recognized him now, and a few things clicked—and my body reacted . . . in a good way. The Paul Metgev I was looking for was really Sergey Baseyev, a gold-plated striker forward for England's Liverpool Football Club. I was somewhat of a European football nut, but Baseyev was hard not to recognize, considering the number of sponsors he had who used him in their television commercials. A good reason for that, beyond his sports star status, was that he was knock-down gorgeous and was in great shape. He also was the scruffily dressed guy I'd discounted on the tarmac.
And, boy, was he big. He was at least a head taller than I was and wide-shouldered, barrel-chested, and thin waisted. But then he was a fast-moving, heavy-hitting soccer player. Of course he was in shape. And of course he could afford the services he was going to get today, Friday, and into tomorrow morning.
"Townsend Properties?" he asked, as he approached, pointing to the sign I held, not too steadily now.
"Yes. Mr. Metgev?" I asked.
"Are you the man sent to serve me?" he asked. His accent was heavily Slavic and his word choice not entirely spot on, although both were quite understandable. Under the circumstances, though, I was aroused at the word choice. Yes, I most definitely was here to serve him, in whatever way he wanted. He was a robust, handsome fellow in a god's body.
"Yes, my name is Cody," I answered, although we both knew my name wasn't really Cody any more than his name was Paul Metgev. "I have a car not far out those doors over there. And I have two properties to show you before we get to Lexington—although we can stop somewhere near here for a meal, if you are hungry."
"They fed me recently and well on the plane," he answered. "I am very much liking to see the horse farms you have listed."
He gave me a smile. It was a bit warmer smile than he'd given me as he was walking past the baggage carousel toward me. It wasn't quite as big a smile, though, as he gave the jet-black, late-model Chevy Corvette convertible I took him to. I gave a little shudder when we exited the terminal, because he'd placed a beefy hand on the small of my back. I was close to hyperventilating when we entered the shadows of the parking garage, because the hand dropped to my buttocks. As easily as that he was taking possession, marking his territory. We both knew he was going to fuck me as often as he wanted and anyway he wanted for the next two days.
"I will drive. You will show me where to go, but I will drive." There was no hint of a request or question in the way he said it. He would as easily and smoothly take control of driving me as he was the Corvette.
I hesitated just a moment. I'd rented the car under instruction, but I hadn't been told that the client would be driving it. Did he have an international driving license? It didn't seem to be a good idea to ask him.
"I always drive, and I drive hard," he said, squeezing my butt cheek and giving me a pointed look. Yes, indeedy, he was going to drive me hard too.
He was laying rubber before we'd left the cover of the garage—but there was no doubting that the man could drive.
* * * *
"What is it about this town?"
"Concerning what?" I asked. We were sitting at an outdoor café on Lexington's Main Street, in a rose-covered trellised alcove. Despite what he'd said when he came off the plane, the man we were calling Paul must have been hungry, because he'd ordered nearly everything on the menu and devoured it all. On our way up the bottom of the Shenandoah Valley from Roanoke, with the Blue Ridge Mountains on our right and the Allegheny range on our left, we stopped to look at two properties. They were small horse farms, with stately mansions set in rolling hills horse country and with miles and miles of white-painted fences. Neither spread was large—less than fifty acres each—but both were mucho expensive. Just this lightning, end-of-the-workweek property inspection trip was very expensive for the client. Just my "anything goes" contract was setting him back ten grand.
"The names," he said. "All over the place. Jackson this, Jackson that. And Stonewall. What in the hell does Stonewall mean?"
I laughed. "That would be Stonewall Jackson. The Stonewall was a nickname, given him because of his stiff resistance. He was a southern general in our Civil War, a hundred and fifty years ago. He lived here. He was a professor at VMI—the Virginia Military Institute—over on that hill over there before going into the war. He died in the war. You've heard that we had a civil war here?"
"I know all about civil wars," Paul said. It was more like he almost spit it out, his face, otherwise sunny and expressive, clouding up. I thought he was going to say something else—that he both wanted to and didn't want to talk about it.
"Although your English is excellent, you don't seem to be from England." I shouldn't have gone there. It was strictly against our rules to pry into the client's background, but he seemed to be disturbed.
"Chechnya. I am originally from Chechnya. And I certainly know about civil wars." I thought he was going to continue, but he changed gears abruptly. "You have said before that this military college, VMI, is here in Lexington. Is that where you are a student? I was told that I'd be escorted by a college student."
"No," I laughed. "I go to Washington and Lee, another old college, which also is in town. The two campuses run into each other. I'm a freshman. I'll be nineteen in a couple of weeks." There, that was over with. He hadn't asked before, and they usually do ask, with me. Sometimes they are skittish enough to require my flashing the fake driver's license the office provides me—and those kinds of men were always delighted to know I was on the edge, legal but looking younger. Age almost always got laid out there on the table at some point. "The students at VMI are like soldiers. We're a lot more casual at W and L. And a lot more adventuresome." I gave him a shy smile and placed my hand on the back of his.
I wasn't really a student at Washington and Lee, or any other college. And I was older than almost nineteen. I just looked younger. I was only in Lexington for a couple of weeks myself, trying to unload some expensive properties down here for a special-services New York agency.
"Was there another property we were to see this afternoon?" he asked, abruptly standing up and standing close to me. I looked around to ensure that no one was looking and then I rubbed my cheek against his crotch, the bulge there leaving no question that he was hard. He'd come so close to me when he didn't have to that I knew that was what he wanted me to do. I knew where this was heading. It was an "everything goes" contract.
He briefly held my head to his crotch by palming my cheek, and he turned my face to where I was mouthing the line of his cock in his trousers. When he did that I dutifully and carefully closed my teeth over the thick cylinder inside the material. There was no doubt—I couldn't show any doubt—about what he could have from me and when and where. But then he pulled me up from my chair and kissed me. We were in the shadows in a nook, so there was little risk of being seen. I opened my mouth to his kiss, letting his tongue in, and palmed his crotch.