Colin got to the restaurant fifteen minutes early. Lots of people in New York were late for everything, because the subway this or the traffic that, and nobody could blame you. Colin always left early for everything, because you never knew if the subway this or the traffic that, so best to budget in Unforeseen Disaster Slack Time. The very worst thing he could think of tonight would be having to text Hamilton, telling him he was going to be late.

He sat in the bar at a table for two, fiddling with the glass of wine he’d ordered, debating whether or not to drink it. It would relax him, but it might make him sloppy, and then Hamilton would leave and…

Fuck! he thought. I’m as bad as a fucking teenage girl on her first date.

Well, that was true enough, or close enough. His two previous encounters hardly counted as dates, and he and Elizabeth, well, the handful of times they’d tried sex had been, well, enough said.

This wasn’t romantic either, he tried to tell himself. You’re paying this man to have sex with you.

Well, when you put it that way, he answered himself, realizing how crazy that dialogue would sound if anyone could listen in to his head.

But even if it wasn’t romantic, it was… Well, more than a transaction. It was Hamilton Dillon! He wasn’t paying some street hustler for a quick fuck, after all. He was paying for a man of culture, a man of style… for companionship, as much as, if not more than, the fuck. Right?

“Hey, Colin,” a soft warm voice said, and he looked up from his glass to see his date.

Colin stood up clumsily to shake Hamilton’s hand. My god…

The forecast of his beauty, that Colin had made from the parts of him visible in the photos, was as accurate as he’d hoped. Hamilton’s face was lit from within, his Paul Newman-blue eyes sparkling with wit and intelligence and… it. Just it, charisma and intelligence and friendliness and… sex.

He had on a gorgeous blue suit and a white shirt so softly glossy that it seemed made of light. He didn’t have a tie, but somehow it just seemed obviously right, like a software billionaire whose whole reason for going into business was so that nobody could make him wear one ever again.

Colin tried to lift his eyes from the creamy hollow at the base of Hamilton’s graceful neck. “How did you…. I mean, hi.”

Hamilton raised an eyebrow, devilishly charming. “How did I know it was you?”

Colin laughed. “The nervous guy sitting alone in the bar, right?”

Hamilton sat down across from him, signaling the waiter. “And not only alone, but in a prominent place, where you could see everyone walking in.”

Colin blushed. “Yeah, if I’d had my eyes on the door.”

Hamilton reached over and just touched Colin’s hand as it fidgeted with the glass. “Well, I’m here now. And we’re going to have a great time together.”

Not one moment of a single sexual encounter Colin ever had could light a candle to the feeling of Hamilton’s fingers on the back of his hand. The softest brush of skin against skin, the silkiness of Hamilton’s touch, the trail of heat it left, the pheromones leaping across the table… He could barely breathe.

“Okay,” Colin managed. “Yeah.”

Hamilton ordered a club soda, which made sense to Colin. He was on the job, after all.

“Is this your first time? With another guy?”

“No. Yeah, basically. I mean… Well.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re my third. I mean, this is the third time I’ve…”

“So it didn’t go so well the other two times?” Hamilton’s eyes on him were kind, eager to hear his story, non judgmental, compassionate… everything, everything he could hope for.

“Well. I got divorced six months ago. Amicably. And I was ready to experiment with guys. I knew I was gay, but I just… I’d never done anything. I didn’t want to go to a bar, so I downloaded Fukr on my phone, and hooked up with someone.”

He sighed. “So, I go to his apartment. And he’s really good looking, right? Very handsome, it’s a beautiful apartment. And he’s in the middle of redecorating, so there are paint rollers and plaster trowels and drop cloths everywhere.”

Colin took a fortifying sip of his wine. “So we talk, it’s going great, he’s a finance whatnot, I don’t remember, it was something boring but I nodded a lot and we got through that…”

Encouraged by Hamilton’s amused smile, he went on. “And we started to kiss, which was great, I was really… Anyway. Then he says, ‘I have a strange request.’ And I said, ‘Okay…’ So he walks me into the bathroom, as he’s telling me about how he’s had these super hot workmen in there every day, and he’s been fantasizing about them.

“And I’ve done some acting, you know, so I think, okay, I can get into that role, even though you know… I mean, I’m not the dominant type, which I imagine is what you’d want in a sexy construction dude fantasy…”

“You’d be surprised how many sexy construction dudes throw their legs in the air at the first opportunity,” Hamilton winked.

Colin laughed. “Okay. Well, we get in the bathroom, and, there’s this wet plaster all fresh and ready. And he says, ‘I want you to plaster me while I jerk off.’”

“Plaster him?”

“Yeah, like put it all over his chest like I’m the construction dude.”

“And what’s in it for you?”

Colin shrugged. “Nothing, apparently. Or anyway, I didn’t stay to find out. And… that was number one.”

“Let’s call that .5, then, since you didn’t even get any.”

“Sure,” Colin said, the wine and the warmth of Hamilton’s attention loosening him up. It was a funny story, if it didn’t happen to you, and he was an actor, right?

“And number two. Well, that went great, for a bit. I mean, we got into his bedroom, and we even got to oral stuff. It was totally dark in there, pitch black, which was fine, you know, I mean, he had a great bod and I would have liked to have seen it but whatever. And then he had me on my back, and…” He blushed. “That’s probably TMI.”

Hamilton grinned devilishly. “Not in this case.”

Colin laughed. “Right. Because we’re about to do butt stuff.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned forward. Hamilton leaned in as well, till their faces were just a few tantalizing inches apart.

“I’m on my back, and I’ve had his fingers up there, and I definitely liked it. And he was putting on the condom and I hear this scratchy kind of noise. ‘What’s that?’ I ask him. And he says, ‘Nothing,’ but like irritated. So he’s just about to put it in me, right? And there’s that noise again. Only now I’m like, wait a minute, that sounds like a person clearing their throat.”

“Oh no,” Hamilton groaned.

“Yeah. So I reach over to the bedside lamp, and the guy is all ‘no, no don’t turn on the…’ And I turn it on and there’s this scream! And I look over, and there’s this guy sitting in a chair in the corner with night vision goggles on. Looking like fucking Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. And I’ve just fried his retinas or something, and they’re both screaming, and Bill’s all, ‘You said you wouldn’t fuck him!’ and my almost-penetrator is all, ‘You promised you wouldn’t make a sound!’ And I just grabbed my clothes and…”

He shrugged, disbelieving, self-deprecating. “And I decided that was the end of that.”

Hamilton shook his head. “Wow. I’m so sorry, my apologies on behalf of all of gayness for that terrible introduction to our people.”

“Apology accepted.”

Colin realized that he’d become startlingly at ease with the man he’d worshipped from afar for so long that he’d seemed like a god, a statue. He chalked it all up to Hamilton’s kindness, his attentiveness… it was already worth every penny.

He blushed. “So, umm…”

Hamilton didn’t let him hang. “It’s up to you. We can have dinner, or go to a movie, or go upstairs now, or later, or never.”

“Definitely not never,” Colin blurted.

“Good man,” Hamilton encouraged him. “You know what? I think I’ll have a glass of wine myself.” He turned his head and lifted an eyebrow at the bartender.

“Oh, don’t do it because I am, I mean, if you…”

Hamilton waved it away. “No, I’m having a good time, Colin. I’d like to have a glass of wine with you.”

“Do you usually do that or… I mean, if that’s none of my business…”

“Not at all. A lot of people are curious what it’s like, being an escort. And sometimes I’ll drink with a client and sometimes I won’t. It just depends on the vibe.”

“How do you decide what the… vibe is?”

Hamilton pondered for a moment. “Well, if I’m with a client who’s very nervous, very tense, I won’t drink, because that man will need my total focus to read his reactions and adjust accordingly.”

“Your vibrator is broken, then, because I’m nervous as fuck.”

“Ah, you’re so wrong,” he said with the most endearing smile Colin had ever received. “You’re a little nervous, sure, but, you know what you want. You have a great sense of humor about that series of unfortunate events, but you were able to use it to tell me about some of the things you like to do, or think you’d like to do.”

“Right, I did say the words ‘butt stuff,’ didn’t I?”

“Have you ever experimented with that, on your own?”

Colin was relieved when more wine arrived. He imbibed more liquid courage before answering.

“Well, I was married. To a woman. For a few years. More of an arrangement, really, but Elizabeth is a good person. We, um, I mean, she knew before I did that I was gay. And she had you know, things for…”

He laughed. “What’s wrong with me? I’m here with you, doing this, and yet I’m afraid to say my wife stuck a vibrator up my ass. And I liked it. A lot.”

Hamilton nodded, his face attentive but… thoughtful.

“Good,” he said softly, and Colin’s breath hitched. “I love to fuck. And you’re…” He paused, eyes serious. “And I’m not bullshitting you, you’re an attractive man. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s under the suit.”

Colin looked at him, some theatrical instinct trying to pierce whatever veil might have been drawn over his eyes. Was this charm, or sincerity? Or a charm so polished and smooth that it was indistinguishable from sincerity?

Hamilton smiled, reading his mind. “I know. You’re paying me. But you’re not paying me to lie. I’d never tell an unattractive client that he was an Adonis. But I’d tell him he has great eyes, or that I love his voice, or some other true thing. You’re a good-looking man. And you’re sexually frustrated as all get out. So I know that when we get upstairs…”

“Let’s go now,” Colin begged him. “Please.”

Because Hamilton was right. His sexual frustration was something he’d kept locked in a dungeon, hoping it would wither and die, but instead it perversely just grew stronger the more he starved it, and now, with Hamilton Dillon telling him he was attractive, with Hamilton Dillon saying he wanted to fuck him…

And Hamilton grinned. “Fuck yeah. Let’s go now.”