After the Kidnap

"The amazing thing about the kidnapping and the reason we can't just ignore it," Saunders said, "Is that, as good as your performance art was before, now it is divine. All the critics say you play to perfection now. In some perverse way, that experience as made you a gleaming star. Do you feel that as well, Christian?"

A few moments of awkward silence ensued. "Christian?" Saunders asked. This was crucial. The young man was still traumatized by the kidnapping. He must be jolted--to be moved forward. But it must not cause a slip back in his performance art. It was obvious what the piano meant to Christian.

"Yes," Christian said. Just that, no more. He'd done what he could to neutralize the experience. He'd let Chuck enter his life and take over everything but the piano. He had gotten better at the piano because there was no other avenue available to him in life--no other escape. Men had commanded and taken full possession of him--and he couldn't help being most satisfied that way. Satisfaction came only two ways in his life--under a man, with the man's dick up his channel, working him, and the only time when Christian had command himself--at the piano, playing classical music.

Saunders could tell that they had gone as far as they could for the moment.

"I understand you have several practice sessions a day," he said. "Why don't you do one now? I would love to hear you play and having done so can be included in my article. Your housekeeper told me I was to stay for dinner and she showed me what to fix and how to prepare it. You play, and I will set up our dinner."

Christian was already turned to the piano, his mind sinking into where to start in practicing on the Dvorak, not the least bit concerned that his guest was the one who would be fixing their supper. Liking Saunders, being drawn to his good looks and self-confidence, prepared to follow his command--even wondering about the command he would take in bed.

* * * *

After clearing away the supper dishes, Richard Saunders announced, as if it was the most natural thing to do, "I think we'll go out to a club this evening. I've heard of one called the Cottage Street Bar not far from here." What he had heard was that it was a gay bar. "It's not far from where I'm staying at the Westward Inn."

"Out?" Christian asked dubiously, his eyes going to the piano, where he'd assumed he be practicing after the interviewer left.

"Sure, go put on something that sets off your good looks and let's go."

Nothing was given in the form of a question or request. The way to handle Christian was to give decisive direction. In this case it worked.

At the door to the bar, Christian paused and nearly backed out, but Saunders took a firm grip on his forearm and guided him into the building. The man was purposely taking Christian out of his element and to a gay bar to jolt him and to take him off the pathway of just lethargically floating along, but he couldn't have known that this bar was quite similar to the one on Fire Island from which Christian had been kidnapped two years earlier.

Christian trembled as they moved to the bar and Saunders ordered drinks for them, but Saunders was moving as if everything was cool and matter-of-fact. That held the younger man in check. Christian was strikingly good-looking and sexy young man--and an obvious submissive--and the men at the bar zeroed in on him, ogling and trying to get eye contact. Christian clung to Saunders as the man of the hour for him.

Not long after they'd entered the bar, Chuck came in. He moved like he owned the place, and he obviously was well known there. If he saw Christian and Saunders at the bar, he didn't indicate as much. He took a circuit of the room, greeting other men here and there, and went to the pool tables that were in an area off the main barroom in much the same configuration as the Fire Island bar had been in.

Saunders had no question about Chuck's appearance. He assumed the bodyguard--the controller--had followed them to the bar. He had been aware that Chuck had been in the shadows, in another room, at the house while Saunders was interviewing and supping with Christian and that he'd been listening in on everything they'd said to each other.

After one drink, "Come, we're leaving," he said to Christian. He'd been standing close to the young man maintaining contact with a hand on Christian's arm or waist, and even on Christian's butt as a signal to other men in the room to stay away and without rejection by Christian, who had shrunk close into Saunder's body.

"Leaving?" Christian murmured, the note of relief clearly discerned in the young man's voice.

Once in Saunder's car, Christian didn't question that Saunders bypassed the Mill Beach Road turn off the Oregan Coast Highway that would have led to Christian's Sandy Lane house but drove on and parked in front of a unit of the Westward Inn motel. The young man remained sitting, somewhat in a haze, still trembling a bit from the unusual trip to the bar, while Saunders came around to the passenger door, opened it, handed Christian out, and walked the young man to the door of one of the motel room units.

Who knows what Saunders planned to happen at that point, but, in his submissiveness and expectation, Christian determined where it went while Saunders appeared to still be in full control. When they entered the motel room and Saunders was closing and locking the door, Christian moved over to the bed, stripped off his clothes, and lay down on his back at the foot of the bed. He grasped his ankles and raided and spread his thighs.

Saunders stood at the door momentarily, looking at what was on offer for him, and calculating whether this fit in with what he purposely was trying to do with and for the young man. He shrugged, slipped off his clothes, fished around in his billfold and came up with his emergency condom packet. When he was crowned, he approached the bed. He hovered over Christian, between the young man's spread thighs. Christian held out his arms. Saunders dipped for a kiss cupping Christian's head with his left hand and putting his cock head in position with his right hand.

"You have to say it," Saunders whispered.

"Say what?"

"You have to tell me you want it--that you agree to it, or it will be no different from before."

"I want it. Fuck me."

Christian flinched, he gasped, and his eyes flashed momentarily when Saunders penetrated, and then he arched his head back, murmured, "Yes, yes, yes," grasped Saunder's biceps with his hands, rested his ankles on Saunder's shoulders, and began moving his hips with the slow, languid fuck.

A little over an hour later, Saunders drove Christian back to his house. They kissed at the door and Saunders gave a time in which he would return the next day. It wasn't clear whether Christian actually tuned in to what he was saying. The young man was off in a world of his own.

After Saunders pulled out of the driveway, Chuck, who had followed them to the Westwind Inn and waited outside while Saunders made Christian his, pulled into the driveway in the Corvette. He found Christian standing by the piano, preparing to sit and play. With no explanation, he gathered Christian up in his arms and took him up to the apartment above the garage.

The bed in Chuck's apartment was fit with restraints at the four corners. Christian offered no resistance as Chuck stripped him and put him on his back. Nor did Christian resist as Chuck restrained the young man's wrists at the corners of the headboard and his ankles at the corners of the footboard.

Christian did jerk and murmur opposition as Chuck, in hovering over the young man and gliding his hands over flesh paused at the bullet wound mark on Christian's left thigh.

"No, don't," Christian whimpered weakly.

"Imagine if this had been in a hand or on one of your arms," Chuck hissed. "Imagine what that would have done to your piano playing. Imagine what it still could do were something were to..."

Christian let out a deep sob and began to cry. Chuck mounted, penetrated, and fucked the hell out of him.

* * * *

The rumble of the Corvette leaving woke Christian up in the morning. He was back in his bed in the house. He was groggy and couldn't be sure how much of what happened the previous night had actually happened--the visit to the bar so much like the one on Fire Island; and what so naturally and casually happened with the interviewer, Richard Saunders, afterward; and then Chuck and the binding, so reminiscent of when he was being held.

It must of all been a dream--most of it, at least, he thought, his mind too muddled to focus on much of anything. The time with Saunders was nice, though. Maybe that part of the dream was a signal of what he wanted from the man. The part about Chuck he would try to suppress... as always.

The glass of water and his pills were on the nightstand, but in a moment of rebellion he didn't take them. The thoughts of the sex with Saunders ran through his mind but he couldn't quite pin them down. He wanted to relive that. He had the urge not to be so much in the haze he normally was kept in. Bypassing the pills, he took a shower and padded out to the living area.

Lilly was in the kitchen area, doing whatever she did there, which included putting toast and juice out on the kitchen island for Christian and making fresh coffee. He exchanged the usual limited pleasant greeting with her while downing the orange juice and taking a piece of toast and mug of coffee. She gave him a peculiar look as if there was something about him that was different this morning--like he wasn't as groggy as usual in the morning.

He went out onto the deck and looked down onto Mill Beach, where he could see that Chuck had just arrived for his morning jog. He'd be gone for an hour or more. That routine rarely changed. Thoughts of Chuck and his control came into Christian's mind but he suppressed them, trying instead to bring up images of Saunders and his lean, ginger-colored-hair dusted hard body--and his beautiful cock and what he did with it. He couldn't quite grasp those thoughts, but maybe in time. He was nervous and felt himself trembling. Maybe he should have taken the pills. There was one way to calm down. It required shoving everything else out of his mind, but that's what he'd been doing for two years. He'd been coping.

Drinking the last of the coffee, Christian moved back into the house and went to the piano. Today he'd work on the piano support for an aria from Rossini's The Barber of Saville he was preparing for a Sacramento Philharmonic performance. When he began to play, what came out, though, was his part in the three-piano version of Debussy's Le Mer. He didn't notice.

He didn't notice with the front door chime sounded and Lilly answered the door, either. He didn't notice the conversation that went on in the foyer between Saunders and Lilly. He didn't notice Lilly going to his bedroom or Saunders standing there, in the foyer, watching Christian and listening to him play until Lilly returned with two suitcases, put them down in the foyer, and then left the house.

Christian didn't notice anything of the real world swirling around him until Saunders came over to the piano and put a hand on Christian's hand, stopping the music.

Christian looked up, smiled, and said, "Hi," as if it was the most natural situation, suddenly finding a man who had fucked you in a motel room the previous night standing there beside your piano.

"Hi yourself," Saunders said. He could have then said something about their sexual encounter, which had surprised him, possibly more than it had surprised Christian. Saunders had had no idea he had become so invested in this beautiful, troubled young man. But he didn't say anything about how they had so casually and naturally coupled or how much he had enjoyed it and had come to regard Christian and his well-being. That was it, of course, it was time to put Christian's well-being first. Whatever else there might be would have to come later. Time was of the essence.

"There's something we need to establish, Christian," he said.

The young man looked up at Saunders. He smiled slightly but whatever there was to be said had to be said by Saunders.

"The reports on your kidnapping--and your comments on that, as well--have not been consistent, Christian. This is important. There was a third man involved, wasn't there? A man who wasn't there when you were rescued."

"No. There wasn't," Christian said. It was said too quickly, though. Christian didn't normally open up that fast to respond to a question.

Saunders leaned down and kissed Christian on the lips. Christian leaned into the kiss. When he straightened up again, Saunders said. "It's OK, Christian. It's going to be OK. There was a third man--the leader--the one who manhandled you the most."

"Yes," Christian admitted.

"It was Chuck, wasn't it? He escaped then, but he came back for you, didn't he?"

Flashing into Christian's mind was the phrase, "Good thing it was your leg. It could have been your hands or one of your arms. It still could be." He began to shake and Saunders took him into his arms.

"It's OK, Christian. I figured it out. I'm not a journalist. I'm a private detective. Your family sent me to find out what was going on here. They're worried about you. They want me to bring you back to New York."

"The concerts--Portland and Sacramento." It was always the music with Christian--the music above all else.

"We'll get you to those concerts, and there is plenty of work for you to do on the East Coast."

"Chuck."

"I've already spoken to the police this morning. I did enough preliminary research on Chuck last night that they had no trouble understanding what happened here. They'll be here before he gets back--but after we're gone."

"We're going?"

"Yes. Lilly packed your bags. You'll come away with me. We'll be in California before Chuck finishes his jog and returns here. Then the concerts--and home."

"And you?" Christian asked, looking hard into Saunder's face, trying his hardest to clear the haze he'd been in for two years away.

"I'll be there with you for as long as you need me," Saunders answered. And even beyond that if you'll let me, he added in his thoughts.