Trading Partners Ch. 01: A and D

[This is a completed three-chapter story and will finish posting by the end of June.]

Avery and Dominick

Avery moved faster than he normally would have from the jewelry store toward the men's department of Dillards, in Richmond's Regency Square mall. It had taken longer to buy the Gucci watch Dominick had been bugging him for months. Not just any watch would do for Dominick's birthday either. It had to be a Gucci Timeless Stainless wristwatch. Of course, having scrutinized and categorized the well-dressed and very presentable Avery and seeing how expensive the watch was that he had asked about, the salesman had tried to sell him an even more expensive timepiece. That had eaten up more time than Avery had planned spending on this purchase.

Avery wondered if Dominick even knew how expensive such a watch was. They hadn't mentioned price. What Dominick had mentioned was that he was restless in their relationship. In response, Avery was doing what he could to keep Dominick's attention focused on how good life was with an indulgent corporate lawyer, and Dominick certainly seemed to know what sort of toys and clothes would maintain his attention.

That was what Avery was afraid of—that he'd left Dominick to his own devices too long in Dillards men's wear department while he was doing a "surprise" buy of the watch.

Dominick was something of a last hurrah for Avery, who was turning fifty-five the week after Dominick turned twenty-two—not that Dominick would notice that Avery too was having a birthday.

Avery thus far had successfully negotiated a double life. For the decades of his thirties and forties, his days had been spent as a highly respected, and paid, corporate lawyer in Virginia's capital. His evenings had been spent wining and dining and attending concerts, the theater, and gallery openings in and around the Fan District, where he lived in a large Queen Anne brick house with pillars and balconies on a quiet and fashionable tree-lined street. For those evenings he always had a stylish, model-thin lady on his arm—rarely the same one more than a couple of times. And in his late thirties he briefly was married to a politician's daughter. But only briefly. Long enough, though, that no one at work and in his social circles questioned his sexuality.

He was a handsome man, with an athletic build, maintained by tennis, squash, golf, and regular visits to the gym—and he aged well; he perhaps was even more handsome as he turned gray and his build became more solid than trim.

It was only on long weekends, when he was younger and establishing himself on the desirable bachelor list in Richmond, that he traveled two hours toward the ocean, to Norfolk, to party in the gay district around Granby Street and make use of the studio condo he had in a high rise on the ocean in Virginia Beach. In stark contrast to his Richmond persona, in Virginia Beach, Avery had been a forceful, dominant lover, seeking out smaller, compliant men, who he fucked cruelly to exhaustion in one-night stands.

In his late forties he spent more time in Richmond and less time partying in Norfolk and Virginia Beach. He did less cruising the gay bars for one-night stands in his Virginia Beach apartment and moved to longer-term affairs with personal trainers and handymen working around his attention-demanding Fan District mansion.

By the time he hit fifty, Avery was ready to settle down to a more stable and committed relationship, and his interests returned to smaller, compliant men. The equally strong and hunky men he had gravitated to in his mid and late forties had worn thin with him—and, truth be known, had raised a scare in him. As he had grown older, such men had started to try to change him to the subservient role, to slip him into the position of being the one more grateful and yielding to a stronger, more virile man.

This slow change scared the stuffing out of Avery when he had stopped to analyze what was happening to the secret sexual side of him. He was managing to keep his confidence and commanding control of his Richmond corporate attorney life, but he realized, with alarm, that he was losing control of the secret gay-lifestyle side of him. The insecurities of growing older didn't appear in his legal career, where age brought deeper experience and respect, if you kept winning cases and negotiations for clients, which he did, but they were becoming accentuated in loss of control to younger, more virile men in his gay sex life.

In defiance, fighting against the advance of age and weakening of his commanding position, Avery had gone back to concentrating on smaller, submissive men. Probably because of how a good life had refined him, now his tastes went to young, trim, and good-looking men, who had artistic talent and could carry a somewhat sophisticated dinner conversation. And tacitly acknowledging he was losing position and stamina in the one-night-stand cruising mode, he looked for longer-term relationships centered and maintained quietly and secretly in his home rather than in gay bars, where he'd once been quite the party boy.

Dominick was the latest in a succession of tries at a long-term relationship. They had met at a Careytown art gallery opening. Dominick was an art student at Virginia Commonwealth University, who had a couple of paintings in the exhibit and sale. Avery had been invited as a patron of the arts and, the gallery hoped, a buyer. Dominick had been there with a local flamboyant car dealership owner who Avery knew to be gay. So Avery had few questions what Dominick's inclinations were as well.

That may have been the largest part of turning him to Dominick. The young man obviously was approachable and, judging from how close to being a slob the car dealership owner was, Dominick probably also was for sale.

Avery was between "arrangements" at the time and took a fancy to Dominick, who sensed the interest and didn't discourage it. Avery purchased one of Dominick's paintings, which he half-regretted had to be hung in the Fan District house as it came with Dominick, and invited Dominick to come help install it.

Enough passed between the two in the gallery that Dominick knew that it wasn't his painting Avery wanted to buy.

It was a large canvas. Dominick had to stand on a stepladder to reach where he was nailing the hook, and Avery stood close behind him to steady the younger man on the ladder. Dominick hadn't minded Avery standing close behind him with his hands on his waist—indeed, he'd been flirting with Avery from the time Avery showed interest in his paintings in the gallery. Dominick had leaned back into Avery's beefy, heaving chest and reached down and helped Avery's hands to come up under the hem of his shirt onto his own chest—and then down to his belt buckle and zipper. By the time Dominick came down off the ladder, they both had lost their trousers and Dominick came down, ass on hard cock, without a complaint in the world. They both reveled in the strength of Avery's muscles as, faces turned to each other, they kissed, and Avery lifted and lowered Dominick's small, trembling body on and off his cock in an ever-faster, deeper motion. Avery had the presence of mind to pull Dominick's channel completely off the cock so that Avery could ejaculate up the small of the young's man's back, the best that Avery could manage under the exigencies of the circumstances.

They belatedly reverted to condoms—several of them—after they had struggled into Avery's bedroom, and didn't leave Avery's house—or his bedroom or his bed—until late the next morning.

Avery had grown older and had changed his hunting mode, but little had changed in his fucking mode from his cruising days in Virginia Beach. He had an oversized cock, which he delighted in stuffing inside smaller men and pistoning hard, listening to the young men squeal and pant and groan. Though Dominick's channel was well used and opened quickly to Avery's onslaught, squeal and pant and groan Dominick certainly did, surprised at how dominant and insistent—and lasting and frequently ready—Avery was on the bed, on the floor, in the shower.

Dominick didn't know how long he could accommodate the demands and vigor of the man, but he was shopping for a new sugar daddy when he met Avery, the car dealer he was rather loosely associating with now being a bit short of sugar in several departments. So it had required only a cursory look around Avery's richly appointed house and a scan of the older man's clothes closet for Dominick to see the benefits of striking up a partnership with this man.

On their first encounter Avery fucked a willing Dominick until midmorning, and Dominick only had to half entice an invitation to a more permanent arrangement out of the lawyer. Dominick waved good-bye to the car dealer the next day, packed his suitcases, and moved in with Avery. It was less than a half-hour's walk from the Fan District mansion to Dominick's classes at VCU, where, at Avery's expense, Dominick entered graduate school the following semester.

The two had been together for over six months when the intensity of the sexual relationship began to wane. The painting of Dominick's Avery had purchased hadn't been hung in that entire time. Avery didn't really think it went well with his décor, and Dominick wasn't under any illusions that it was his ass, not the painting, that Avery had purchased. Avery hadn't lost interest in the sex, but although Dominick continued to accommodate him, he slowly showed that he was more interested in a material life than a sexual one, and it was increasingly evident to Avery that he was buying this relationship. He wasn't a fool; he had known that he'd be buying any such relationship. But he expected his partner to be a good enough actor not to rub it in his face. The least that Dominick could do, Avery thought, was to show passion during their couplings. But more often than not now Dominick was more passive than compliant, compliance including some facet of responding to the fuck. Passivity only required being there.

And Dominick was spending more and more time away from the house when he wasn't in class. Avery couldn't avoid the thought that Dominick was seeing other men.

The two had settled into somewhat of a rut, neither one of them wanting to be the one to broach the subject of their relationship and the extent to which either found it satisfying. Avery had prepaid tuition for two years, and now Dominick was showing signs of restlessness.

Normally Avery would see the writing on the wall and start looking around, but he wasn't getting any younger. He was growing tired of the changing partners routine and had hoped that Dominick would be the one he could grow old with. Unfortunately, Dominick was still young and was exceedingly hard to pin down. He knew about the apartment in Virginia Beach and the gay district in Norfolk and, increasingly, he was bugging Avery to take him partying there.

He also was young enough to be impressed with gifts and to show his interest blatantly, which had led to the shopping spree at the Regency Square Mall for his birthday.

Avery approached the men's wear department at Dillards in time to see Dominick trying on a cashmere jacket and modeling it for another young man, maybe in his early thirties, tall and heavily muscled in contrast to Dominick's lithe build and small stature, on the macho side where Dominick was slightly effeminate, and the taller young man had curly blond hair and blue-eyes in contrast to Dominick's Mediterranean olive complexion and dark hair and eyes, a look that had always aroused Avery. The young man Dominick was talking with looked more like a high school football coach or car mechanic than a Dillards sales clerk.

"There you are, Avery," Dominick said brightly as Avery walked up. "Isn't this coat lovely?"

"Yes, it's very nice," Avery answered. He might have added that it looked very expensive, but that would be a waste of breath. Everything that attracted Dominick was very expensive. And he was more concerned with the man Dominick had been talking with. There was an interest or even a shared intimacy between the two that Avery didn't like to see.

"What do you think, Logan?" Dominick said, turning to the blond giant. "Doesn't it look stunning on me?"

"Ratty jeans look stunning on you, Dominick," the other young man said and then he laughed.

Dominick turned a questioning look toward Avery, who, immediately capitulating, as he knew he must, said, "If you like it, of course you must have it. We'll have to find a sales clerk . . . unless, of course, this gentlemen is a clerk."

The "gentlemen" looked a bit amused.

"Oh, you haven't met," Dominick said. "This is Logan, he's with a fellow student of mine, Kelsey. Avery's the man I live with, Logan."

Avery wasn't wild about the baldness of Dominick's explanation, but he was somewhat relieved that Logan was hooked up with someone else. Only somewhat, because he very much didn't like the familiarity being displayed between Dominick and this Logan guy.

He was justified in not being quick to be relieved, because on the way home from the mall, Dominick revealed what he was thinking of them sharing—a trading partners date or two—with Logan and Kelsey, and, although Avery didn't like the suggestion one bit, he knew he was being backed into a corner if he wanted to keep Dominick with him and didn't want Dominick pointing to age as the source of Avery's reluctance.

"You remember Kelsey, don't you?" Dominick said. "He's a grad student studying painting too. We've been in some of the same exhibits. You've been to the openings."

After some further explanation, Avery was able to surface a vague sense of this Kelsey. Dark complexioned like Dominick. Not noticeably gay like Dominick was. Certainly not flamboyant. Even smaller of stature than Dominick. Slim. Quiet. Now that he thought about it, he remembered the shy smile of the man. He hadn't thought of him as being gay, though. Maybe that's why the young man hadn't made more of an impression on him. Avery hadn't considered him approachable. It was a surprise and shock to think of him with this Nordic blond, Logan. More of an image of him came to Avery's mind, however, as his imagination viewed the small, dark Mediterranean-type man in a coupling embrace with the hulking blond. He forced his imagination to stop spinning before seeing himself in Logan's role with the young man. He didn't want to give in to the proposition that easily.

* * * *

"I don't particularly like the idea."

That was an understatement. Avery hated the idea. It scared him. It hadn't helped that Dominick had seemed almost a disinterested lump while Avery was fucking him just before Dominick had whispered for the second time what he wanted them to do.

Avery had been more forceful, more cruel, than he had intended with the sex. Dominick had been a snotty little shit since Avery had come home from a particularly difficult day at work. One of the few chores Dominick had was to get dinner started. His classes ended two hours before Avery was due home. But Avery was an hour late this evening, and nothing was even defrosting.

"I thought we'd go out," Dominick answered when asked about dinner. "I'm in the mood for Azzurro."

Naturally. An expensive Italian restaurant, Avery thought, bitterly. He'd been on edge about this since he'd given Dominick that Gucci watch on top of buying him the cashmere coat—and Dominick had completely overlooked Avery's birthday. The thanks for the birthday presents had been, to put it generously, lukewarm. This was getting old.

"I've had a rough day."

"Nothing's thawed and I'm not really in the mood to cook. But I am in the mood for Italian," Dominick said. The way he stood there, just in cotton shorts, hip cocked and hand on hip, at the edge of the breakfast bar with Avery barely inside the house, briefcase still in hand, irritated Avery. It also aroused him, though.

I came home in the mood for Italian too, Avery thought. A young, Mediterranean man with his back on the bed and his legs open to me. "And you're interested in expensive Italian. You want me to take you to Azzurro and foot the bill," he shot back at Dominick. "And what do I get out of it if I'm not in the mood for expensive Italian food? What do I get out of what you want to have?"

"I don't understand," Dominick said. But he obviously quickly did understand, as Avery had tossed off his suit coat and was unbuttoning his shirt and unbuckling the belt of his trousers.

The look on Avery's face caused Dominick to step back a couple of paces and then turn and head for the stairs to the second floor. Avery caught him at one of the guest bedroom doors. He picked him up, and propelled them both to the bed. Dumping the smaller man unceremoniously on the bed, he pushed Dominick down on his back, grabbed, spread-eagled the young man's legs, and stripped his shorts off. In short order, he was fucking Dominick hard and fast, lifting Dominick's buttocks off the surface of the bed, squeezing and spreading those pert little butt cheeks, and thrusting his cock deep. Dominick cried out and twisted and moaned through the first couple of thrusts. But then he sighed and settled down, wrapping his legs around the small of Avery's back in acceptance and disinterested resignation. As Avery thrust and thrust and thrust, in hard, punishing jabs.

Hard and fast was usual for their first coupling, but not nearly as cruel and anger-centered as this. Dominick just lay there under Avery, quietly grunting and moaning, but not showing any passion, until he could hold out no longer and began bucking against Avery's pelvis as hard as Avery was pumping him and crying out at the taking. This obvious effort to deny the pleasure made Avery more angry, which was translated to the way in which he was taking Dominick.

"Sorry," he whispered in the younger man's ear when he was done, realizing that it was a fuck he'd taken from Dominick rather than shared with him. "We'll shower and then I'll take you to Azzurro," he said, his attempt at atonement, speaking, he knew, the language of privilege that Dominick understood.

The peace offering was being accepted. Dominick moved up onto the bed and pulled Avery up to where their bodies were stretched against each other and Avery was embracing the younger man. That's when Dominick had made the suggestion.

"You know Logan, the man we ran across in Dillards the other day?"

"Yes."

"His partner, Kelsey, is very nice. I'm sure you'd like him."

"In which way?"

"You know in what way. In the ways you have said you liked me."

"I don't know what you're getting at."

"I mentioned it before, but I don't think you were really listening to me. I feel we're getting too, you know, same same, you and me."

"I still don't know what you're getting at," Avery said. He didn't deny, though, that the two of them had gotten into a rut. He had wanted it to be a comfortable relationship. But he had to admit that it was more of a rut. And somewhere in the back of his mind, his mind dredging up the hulking blond named Logan, Avery suspected that Dominick wasn't allowing himself to be in as much of a rut as Avery was.

"I like Logan. Not as much as I like you, of course. But I was wondering if a bit of variety would be good for us. I know you'd like Kelsey."

"You're suggesting a swap arrangement?" Avery asked, sitting up on the bed, away from Dominick's body, not being able to keep the shock out of his voice.

"Yeah, like I said before, the day we bought the jacket. Maybe just once . . . or twice . . . just to see if it spices our life up. A shared date, you could say."

That's when Avery said, in an understatement, that he didn't particularly like the idea. Dominick wasn't good with understatement, however. He took that as a maybe. And to soften up the suggestion, before they showered to go to Azzurro, Dominick pushed Avery gently on his back and mounted the cock he had been stroking hard again while outlining his suggestion, and rode Avery to a more languid and gentle coming than the previous fucks. This was the way Avery liked it—something wilder to start and then something slower, with a long buildup.