He didn't arrest my attention just because he was strikingly good looking--tall and slim, graying at the temples, probably mid-to-late forties, with commanding hazel eyes and a ready smile in movie-star-handsome features. He was wearing a tuxedo--and wearing it quite convincingly. What was unusual was that I was wearing one too and so was the young man standing behind him. That, in itself, wasn't unusual, but where we were wearing tuxedos was what was unusual. We were in the visitor's room of the Annapolis, Maryland, police station, me at one window and he at the one beside mine, negotiating with a police clerk in getting our respective clients out of lockup.
He looked familiar, and I thought he might recognize me too when he looked at me and smiled. But I couldn't place him, not even when I heard him tell the young man behind him, "Collect Mr. Hadley when he comes out, Ed, and see that he gets home--and try to keep away from any reporters lurking around. They'll have the story soon enough."
The young man answered, "Yes, Mr. Masters." That name seemed familiar too but no lightbulbs went off over my head. We were just two lawyers called away from wherever we'd been wearing tuxedos--not the same event, I didn't think; mine had been in Baltimore--to spring clients from jail for now. My client was a junior banker from Wilmington who had been pulled over near an Annapolis bar on a DUI.
It appeared that the man was about to say something to me, when my cellphone rang and I answered it. It was the client's wife. My response after we click off was a verbalized, "Shit."
"What's the matter?" the man next to me asked as he pulled away from his window, replaced by the young man he'd told to finish up their work here.
"The client. Or rather the client's wife. She hired me to spring the guy out--a DUI--and now she says not to do so. She says his office wants him to sit on ice for a day or two to give him something to think about. She didn't seem happy at all. And she was being unhappy at me. It isn't my call, of course."
"Of course not," the man said. "I'm Carter Masters. An Annapolis firm. You?"
"I'm Tyler Ware. New to it. Working out of Baltimore." We shook hands. He briefly wrapped fingers around my thumb when we pulled back, which surprised me. In the world I'd come from and was trying to move beyond that had meaning--a seeking submissive. I was sure it was just an accident here. It did cause me to take a second look at him and then to quickly look away. Yes, he was attractive in that way, but I had changed my life since law school and clerking for Judge Prentice.
"So, it's back to Baltimore and whatever you were doing when you were called out?" he asked, providing the first reference to recognizing that I was in a tuxedo.
"Yes, but now I don't know how to get back. I left quickly when I got the phone call. The client's father is one of our major clients--you know how it is, I'm sure. Another lawyer was leaving the banquet early--that's where I was, a farewell banquet at the Renaissance Harborplace for one of our senior partners--and a let him drive me over here without any thought to how I would get back." I had left the car for my wife, Pattie, to get home, but something in the back of my mind prevented me from telling Masters I was married.
"Yes, I know how catering to the important clients can be," he said was a winning smile. "It so happens I'm driving back to Baltimore now. I was called away from an evening at the opera. Perhaps I could give you a lift." And, thus, we'd both provided plausible explanations for being in tuxedos. It didn't occur to me until later that a question lingered there of why his younger associate, Ed, was in a tuxedo. Was Masters at the opera with a younger man, a law associate? But I didn't think anything of that at the time.
"Yes, if you're going anywhere close to the Inner Harbor, that would be very good of you. I'm not sure how much longer the banquet will be going on, though."
"Will you really miss not having banqueted?" he asked, flashing me that glorious smile of his.
"Not really," I answered.
"And me neither on the opera," he said. "Shall we? My car is just outside."
* * * *
I shouldn't have gotten into the sleek, black Mercedes sedan with Masters--not if I was serious about establishing a new life. I probably knew where this would lead when I got into the car in Annapolis, but I did anyway. That handshake, coming from my hidden world--the encasing of the thumb. And had he stroked it a bit? I couldn't remember. But it was hard to misunderstand that signaling. How had he so quickly gauged my interests? If it hadn't been a mistake, he was from my hidden world as well and had seen it in me. Could I--with him? I looked over at him in the driver's seat. Yes, I certainly could.
It was only a forty-five-minute drive to cover the distance from the capital of Maryland on the Severn River to the Baltimore inner harbor, and conversation was kept to a minimum. But the link was established during our chit chat and I didn't even realize it at the time.
Masters told me he was a lawyer in an Annapolis firm that was branching out into Baltimore. If he told me the firm's name, I don't remember. I was too busy trying to hold my nerves in check, sitting there, in the plush darkness of the Mercedes cabin, beside an elegantly dressed, movie-star handsome older man I couldn't deny I fancied. I'd been aflutter since he'd reached over to change the gear from reverse to drive and "mistakenly"--or so I told myself--overshot and gripped my knee instead.
But could we? Would we fit? Did he know I was a top. It usually was the other way around in arrangements like this. The signal--him sheathing my thumb should indicate a fit. But he was a command sort of guy. Commanding from the bottom? That too fit my fetish, as did him being an older man.
"Sorry," he said, turning his face to me and smiling. I don't think he was sorry, though. He didn't pull away for the longest moment--much longer than was necessary to adjust for an innocent mistake. I'm sure he could feel me tremble to his touch.
If this was what I thought it was, I thought. I should be taking command more, whether or not I was agreeing to a hookup--at least initially. I could give over control later to the pleasure of both of us. I had always been a top, although I liked it best if the bottom took the initiative. I didn't want to give him the impression I was a submissive. I needed to get across that I was the one with the shaft--or at least that I had been "the big dick" to ride when I was active, at the university and early on in law school until I caught on to what sort of life successful lawyers had to convey.
I hadn't thought about these issues--had I?--since before Pattie and I had become engaged, had married, and had set into a successful lawyer's life, partially thanks to Pattie's father, a senior lawyer at our firm, not the lawyer who was being feted tonight to retirement, but soon to follow. The firm was in talks with other firms wanting to acquire us. Some of our lawyers would stay with the new firm and some would be pushed out. Pattie's father would be retiring soon. I had to walk the straight and narrow if I didn't want to be one of the ones pushed out in a merger.
The link was provided innocently enough.
"Where did you go to law school?" Masters asked as we pulled onto I-97, headed toward the Baltimore beltway.
"Right here in Baltimore--the University of Maryland."
"Ah, yes, a good school. I know several of the professors there."
"I studied under Judge Prentice. William Prentice," I said, walking into the trap all by myself.
"Yes, Bill's a good friend of mine. A very good friend. We look out for each other."
