The Substitute Travel Companion

I was lying on my back, my rump at the footboard edge of the mattress, my legs spread and raised, me holding them out and trembling, with Fed kneeling between my thighs, his tongue lapping at my hole, and me panting and moaning when my cellphone, lying on the nightstand in the bedroom of our 37th-Street Manhattan Garment District apartment, started buzzing. Fed rose up from me and reached for the phone.

"Leave it," I said. "If it's important, they'll leave a message."

"I forgot. I may know about the call. You need to take it."

"OK, shit," I growled, turning onto my belly and crawling up onto the bed to where I could reach the still-buzzing phone. "Who the fuck is Lorenzo Carbone?... oh, right, the Italian shoe manufacturer who I met in Federico's office this afternoon."

"Yes, that's it. Take the call, and, as a favor to me, say 'yes.' I'll explain later, Kirk."

I took the call.

"Hello, is this Kirk Reynolds? I'm Lorenzo Carbone. We met this afternoon at Federico Amato's office. He gave me your number and said I could call."

"Oh, yes, I remember you." And, indeed, I did--one slick dude. He was pushing fifty, but he was a real hunk--elegantly turned out, handsome as a movie star, tall and trim, graying at the temples, expressive hands, with long, slender fingers and manicured nails. Did any men get their nails manicured anymore? I guess maybe Italian men did--maybe high-end shoe manufacturers from Milan did.

Anyway, the late forties looked very good on him, as did fifty-three on Fed. That I was only twenty-five didn't need to be relevant in terms of physical attraction. Both of those men were beautiful Italians and I was a submissive. I was trying to be submissive only for Fed, though, which wasn't easy. I was a high-fashion model on the runway and in clothes commercials. I got propositioned a lot.

"I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time." Yes and no, I thought. Bad timing but I was having a good time. Fed had come up on the bed behind me, was encasing my thighs in his arms, with his hands squeezing and separating my butt cheeks. He had gone back to tonguing my asshole, opening me up, preparing me.

"No, not at all," I answered. I wasn't about to tell him what he would be interrupting if Fed wasn't just getting on with it.

"I called because I'm in New York and I can't live on all business. I thought Federico could lunch with me tomorrow--I have reservations at the Casa Nonna on 38th Street, off 8th Avenue--but he says he's too busy. I'm staying at the Staypinapple Hotel near there, on 36th. He said you might go to lunch with me. He knows I am asking you and said it was fine. I enjoyed meeting and talking with you briefly. I find you attractive and would like to talk with you more--over lunch tomorrow?"

He was maybe being a little forward, but we were all gay here and he knew that Federico, a retail clothes buyer for major department stores, was my partner. I didn't think he was really making a pass at me--just staying in form. And Fed apparently didn't see him as a threat either. He'd obviously offered me up as a substitute for a little social time with the man. I knew the Fed was having a very busy time of it and that he knew I didn't have any gigs for the next two weeks after tomorrow night--at least that I didn't have any yet. And I also knew that Fed wanted to land this Italian's shoe production account and thought he had the inside track because he'd been born in Milan, where Carbone's primary plant was located.

"Why, yes, I can meet you for lunch," I answered. I needed to get off the phone fast. Fed's tongue was putting me in high heat. Fed might be fifty-three but he was a great lover and was big enough to fill and stretch me like no man before him had done.

I clicked off. "OK, how much shepherding does this man need in New York?" I asked as Fed moved up my body, hovering over me.

"I said later. We have business to concentrate on now," he murmured in my ear. "He's just passing through New York. His family's bought a shoe plant out in Michigan and he'll go out there to look at it. He asked me to go with him, but I, of course, can't."

"So, what's the...Oh, shit, Fed. FUCK! You're so huge!"

"Yes, yes, I am," he answered, but that was the last thing he said for a while. He was penetrating and stretching me, working his thick shaft inside me from behind and above. He was an athletic man and liked showing off his physical prowess. He went into a push-up stance stretched over me, taking his weight on his hands planted beside my shoulders and on his toes between my spread legs. He was sheathed inside me, covered with a Trojan Magnum, and, elevating my hips a bit so I could get a hand under my belly, stroking myself off, I panted and moaned for what seemed to be forever as he pumped me thick and deep in an ever-quacking rhythm in his push-up stance.

* * * *

Lorenzo Carbone and I arrived at the Casa Nanna restaurant nearly simultaneously the next afternoon. He was as god-like on this day as he'd been in Fed's office the previous day. His smile was dazzling, his accent was enchanting. I wasn't the only one enchanted. We were waited on by a young, quite-good-looking blonde woman, and the interaction between Carbone and the waitress gave me pause and put me off guard. He flirted with her and she was so impressed by and drawn to him that she melted. I think that if he'd propositioned her right there, she would have lain down on the table and spread her legs for him.

I thought that Fed had told me the man was gay. But maybe he hadn't. Maybe I'd just assumed that--maybe because he seemed just too sexy, even for his age, to be wasted on women. It was only after we'd eaten and were having coffee and had had a wonderful chat in comparing the fashion industry in Milan as opposed to New York when I became straightened out about him again. He was at least bisexual, I discovered--because he did proposition me.

"Federico thought you might be free to show me a bit of the city this afternoon," he said. "I would love to walk it, and I have been instructed by

la mamma

that I must go to the top of the Empire State building, and as cliché as that is, one does not deny an Italian mother."

"I suppose I can show you around a bit, but I have a show to do this evening, so it couldn't be for too long."

"I don't like to look around alone--and I particularly don't like to travel alone. And that's why I asked you to lunch. Fed can't go with me, but he suggested that you might--that you had some time off."

"Oh?" I said, not being able to think of much of anything else to say, as surprised as I was. Fed never did get around to telling me there was a reason to go to lunch with this man that was larger than just going to lunch with this man. But Fed obviously wanted me to say "yes" to whatever this shoe manufacturer was going to ask of me.

"Thinking that Federico could travel with me," he continued, "I bought two sleeper rooms on the train out to Chicago the day after tomorrow. From there we were going up to a town in Michigan called South Haven, which is on the shore of Lake Michigan, I've been told. We were going to spend several days there inspecting a shoe plant my family has bought before flying back to New York. Since Federico can't go, I was hoping that perhaps you can. It would be refreshing to be traveling with a beautiful young man like you and I hate to travel alone. And the train tickets are not refundable. You'd be my guest for everything, of course."

His hand had extended to my forearm and he was playing with my downy blond hair there with those long, sensuous fingers of his.

"You just need someone to travel with you?" I asked.

"I'm hoping for more," he answered. "I have needs."

I didn't give that much of a pause. I was hooked. "Yes, I suppose I could--go to Chicago with you," I answered. "I do seem to have a couple of weeks off before my next photo shoot." I knew Federico wanted me to say yes. I knew this was a very important account for him.

Carbone had the idea that I was saying yes to so much more. I wasn't quite there yet, but I didn't disabuse him of his understanding. "I am happy you are so amenable. Perhaps I am not too old of a man for you to want to be seen traveling with then."

"No, of course not. You are a very handsome man." And very sexy, but I knew if I said that, it would be like lighting a firecracker and I wasn't totally sure yet that he wanted to fuck me. He hadn't been explicit yet and he was Italian. I had to allow for some language differences.

But he did want to fuck me.

"That's wonderful. I find you to be a very sexy young man too." I guess it didn't matter that I had avoided using the volatile word "sexy." He had responded as if I had anyway. "As much as I should go to the top of the Empire State Building, I think my time--our time--could be utilized more pleasurably if you came back to my hotel room with me now. I ache to be inside you. I want to make love to you--no, I can see that you are young and that young men now are straightforward with their language. I want to fuck you--repeatedly. I assure you that I am very good at it. You will pant and moan." He had reached down and was stroking my hip with those sensuous fingers of his. "Such a narrow waist and hips," he murmured. "I love a young man with a narrow waist and hips--perhaps the tips of my fingers will meet as I hold your hips steady and I enter you strongly and deeply."

We had been getting there, but this flood of desire and want was too much too fast. "Uh, no, sorry, I don't think that's possible," I blustered. "Federico and I are partners. I don't really... and I just remembered that I have to go for fittings this afternoon for what I'm to wear in the fashion show tonight." I had stood up from the table. "But really..."

He looked more amused than embarrassed. "I'm sorry. Have I been too forward too fast? Federico told me you were an exceptional lay. He is older than I am. You take his cock, so I am sure you can take mine. And I am Italian. Federico must have told you how open we Italians can be with our desires. And you are highly desirable."

He did, did he? He told you I was a great lay? I was close to hyperventilating. Maybe I shouldn't be as sensitive to partnering with Federico. "No, no, it's OK. You are a beautiful man. If I wasn't trying it with Fed... I really do have to go do those fittings, though."

"Perhaps tonight then, after your fashion show. I will take you to dinner and then you will writhe with pleasure under me."

"No, sorry. I will be home with Federico this evening."

"Writhing under Federico? You think he can fuck you as well as I could?"

"It's... we are partnered."

"I hope this doesn't mean you won't travel to Chicago and Michigan with me. I can try to be good--as tempting as you are. I really do hate traveling alone and I haven't done much of it in America. I really do need a travel companion to help smooth the way."

"No, no, that's fine. I'll travel with you," I said. I couldn't drop my loyalty to Federico and he needed this account. He probably didn't even say anything to Carbone about me being a good lay.

"But I do have to go now. Thanks for the lunch. Telephone me about the when and where of getting the train to Chicago."

And, with that, I fled the restaurant. I paused outside of the restaurant and took another look at Carbone through the front window. He was, in fact, a very, very sexy and charismatic man. I laughed, though. He was flirting with the waitress again, and I had visions of her taking her apron off and going straight to his hotel room with him and being the great lay for him that I wasn't able to be. I had no trouble managing more than a bit of regret that it wouldn't be me.

* * * *

The travel time from New York's Penn Station to Chicago's Union Station on Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited was a just-shy-of-a-twenty-four-hours overnight ride from nearly 11:00 in the morning to just after 10:00 the next morning. Carbone had ticketed us for two adjacent roomettes, with miniscule baths, each with two key cards that gave each of us full access to each other's cabins. Each roomette was an approximately eight-by-eight-foot space, one fourth of which was the bath, and into the rest was crammed a sofa that opened up into two bunk beds at night and a chair, with the outer wall being almost completely a glass window. There was a dining car for the first-class passengers, with a skydome lounge above that.

The accommodations were conducive to intimacy and before we reached Chicago, we had attained total intimacy.

Lunch was convivial, with Carbone having much useful information to convey about the fashion industry--both in Italy and the United States. He was an expert in that as in, it seemed, everything else. He couldn't help from being a sexy man, but through lunch and the afternoon in the skydome lounge, broken up by each of us returning to our individual roomette for a nap, and into dinner, the conversation did not move to the sexual.

It easily could have, as he was dressed to allure--all in black, a black silk long-sleeve shirt over tight black trousers and boots, with the shirt unbuttoned nearly down to the navel, showing an interesting swirl of salt-and-pepper chest hair around his pecs, with a line of hair descending to where the shirt was buttoned. Nobody can dress sexy like an Italian can. When he leaned forward over the table to press home a point with me, the shirt opened enough to show that his left pec was covered in a swirly black tattoo pattern. A gold medallion on a gold chain nestled between his bulging pecs. He had the deep tan one would expect of an active man living in the Mediterranean.

His sexiness certainly was observed by the young man--Sean, his nameplate claimed--who waited on us at lunch and then managed to do so at supper as well. Sean was obviously gay and equally obviously a submissive--and one who would die to go under a mature Italian god like Lorenzo Carbone. He was young--younger than I was, I think--and small, lithe, willowy, and quite openly effeminate. He fawned over Carbone and was reserved with me, who he obviously saw as competition. In turn, Lorenzo surprised me by hardly noticing the young man and his attempts at flirting. It was the second time that a restaurant server--Lorenzo's reaction to them--had made me second guess the Italian's preferred sexuality. Here he was being offered a good-looking, if limp-wristed young man on a platter, and he wasn't showing interest.

Equally, he had backed off on showing sexual interest in me. It was all welcome lecturing on a business I was in my early years of entering into.

After dinner, as it was getting dark, we went back up to the skydome to watch the sun set and the world chug by us. We drank brandy and he had a cigar. He flirted with the young woman who was tending the bar until Sean came up to lean on the bar and to stare worshippingly at Carbone under the guise of also flirting with the bargirl. The young man was determined. When I said I would retire with a book to my own roomette and, without Carbone demurring, moved toward the staircase down to the train's first level, I couldn't help but noticing that Sean moved into the seat across from Carbone that I'd vacated and was trying to engage the Italian in conversation.

I was on edge and confused, which, in hindsight, is probably how Carbone wanted me to be. I certainly didn't want him to be as forward in his propositioning as he had been when he took me to lunch and yet that had aroused me and I didn't really want him to just drop it--not to keep trying in some fashion. Of course I had no intention of letting him fuck me--or at least I was going to make him work for it--but I was disappointed that he seemed to have given up all forms of the choice.

But then, he hadn't. He was conditioning me.

I went back to my roomette, stripped down to sleeping shorts, sat in the chair for a while, watching the lights of the countryside slide by, took a book into the lower bunk the porter had converted from the sofa while we were at dinner, and eventually, with a sigh turned out the lights, and let the clackety clack of the train wheels over the rails lull me to a quick sleep.

Later, in the dark, I was half awake while getting the sensation of someone having entered the roomette, wearing a silken robe, and standing momentarily by the bunk, looking down at my prone body. I caught glimpses of a lean, hard body, a swirl of tattooing on his left pec in the flashing of lights in the passing countryside beyond the window as the robe slipped off his body. I was aware he was in magnificent erection. I was aware he had the body of a god.

And then the scene moved ever so quickly. Carbone was on top of me in the bunk. In a drunken stupor, I wrestled with him for a brief time, huffing and puffing, but not resorting to crying out until that was too late. He'd brought restraints and a ball gag and he was too powerful for me. In no time, he had me incapacitated, stretched out on my belly on the bed. My wrists were restrained and hooked on something above my head at the top of the bunk. My legs were strained both at the ankles and around the thighs, holding my legs together, and anything I might have screamed out was muffled by a ball gag in my mouth and the incessant chugging of the train's engine and the squeal and gnashing of its wheels along the rails.

The struggling wasn't continuous, there was a sporadic nature about it, my efforts coming in waves of ineffectual struggle and moments of exhausted surrender. This no doubt told the man that I was with him in this--that I was enjoying the game. But at this point, it was no game. He was taking me regardless of what I wanted. He forced me. I struggled against the restraints but then reduced my reaction to exhausted whimpering when he had me bound. I moved against him again when his tongue went between the crease in my buttocks, but I couldn't manage this for long. The arousal was just too much and I was reduced to low moaning, my clutching with the sphincter muscle relaxing to the rubbing of the tongue. I opened the channel to him; we both knew I had. And then again when he mounted and penetrated me, I struggled against him as he forced himself inside me.

But eventually there seemed no reason to continue attempting a resistance. I didn't even want to resist him anymore. He was inside me, moving in and out, with something about him causing the muscles of my passage walls to ripple and undulate over the moving hard shaft, and I gave in to him and my sensations went to how exhilarating, arousing, and satisfying this was.

He may have taken my reaction as a game, but I was being forced. And it may have been force against my expressed will, but my giving into it at last and going with him in the motions of the coupling were a genuine surrender to the mastery of him. The kicker was that he may have been justified into thinking I was in to it--that I was roleplaying. I couldn't deny that half way through the assault, when he was inside me and I was fucked one way or the other, the exoticness of being bound and helpless to the lust of another man swept over me and I wanted it. I wanted him inside me. And I wanted him to want me so much that he just bound and conquered me.

I writhed under him as he leaned over, spread my butt cheeks with his hand, and tongued my ass open. He did not spend much time doing this before he was on top of me, stretched out on my captive body, forcing himself inside me, fucking me. I arched my back, panting hard, doing everything I could to cry out at the penetration, one like I'd never felt before, aware that it was more than that he was just thick and long. Later I was to discover that he had line of gold beads pierced into the underside of his cock and a larger bead in his glans. With these he stretched and punished and worked my passage as no man had done before.