When Work Is a Pleasure (3 page)

Alec held out his hand. “Hey man, nice to meet you.”

Garrett kicked his brain back into gear. “Yeah, uh, likewise. But the, um, interview is only if you, like, want to.

And not now. Tomorrow. Or whatever.”

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He wanted to crawl in a hole and die. He hadn’t stammered that much since he was a gawky teenager trying to talk his way into a bar, hoping to get laid.

Alec smiled politely while Kris and Carl hooted with laughter. “So I’m guessing you caught me’n’Jeremy’s show a little earlier?”

Garrett resisted—just barely—the urge to bury his face in his hands and instead took a deep breath. “Yeah. Uhm. It was… good.”

Clapping him on the thigh again, Alec threw his head back and laughed. “Thanks, man. Glad you liked it. No need to get all embarrassed that it got you off, though. That’s kind of the point, you know,” he teased.

“Nah, my boy here’s all a-fluster because he
didn’t
get off,” Kris put in.

“I’m not much of an exhibitionist,” Garrett mumbled.

“Nobody woulda been watching
you
,” Carl pointed out helpfully.

“Whatever.”

“So, been to check out the rest of the party yet?” Alec asked, coming to Garrett’s rescue.

“We have,” Kris said, jerking his head at Carl. “Writer-boy hasn’t yet. We’ve been monopolizing him, making him work, setting up some interviews for tomorrow.”

“You want to come check the party out with me?” Alec asked Garrett. “That is, if you’ve got enough work done…?”

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Garrett nodded. He had a handful of agreements and times to meet set up for tomorrow, not including Alec, if he ever worked up the nerve to ask him to do an interview too.

He exchanged mobile numbers with Carl and Kris, making plans to meet up with them again at the fair. He submitted to a kiss on the cheek and a hug from Carl, while Kris made his farewell with a slap on Garrett’s ass and an order not to come back until he’d had at least one orgasm:

“Unless you’re looking to be the world’s first case of terminal blue balls, that is.”

As Garrett made his way back down into the house, he was surprised to note that Alec, unlike most of the other

“entertainers,” wasn’t nude. He’d put on a pair of boxer-briefs, but Garrett had been so frazzled that he hadn’t even noticed up there on the roof. They didn’t really hide enough to be anything other than tantalizing.

Man, Garrett was
so
gone.

There was another show on the small stage in the room with the bar, but thankfully Alec was more interested in grabbing a couple of beers than staying to watch. They headed through another door, down to the lower level.

Downstairs was dark and murky and smelled like sweat and come. Once Garrett’s eyes adjusted, it was easy to see why; the room was just a huge writhing knot of men fucking. The analytical part of Garrett’s brain counted approximately thirty-five bodies: men sucking each other off, fucking, being fucked, watching, being watched. Everywhere he looked, he was surrounded by sex.

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He must have made some sort of noise because Alec leaned close, his breath teasing Garrett’s ear. “Want to join in?”

He honestly thought about it for a moment. He was totally freaked out but also totally turned on. And how many orgies had he been invited to join before? Especially with hot porn stars? None. Maybe it was a now-or-never offer from the Gay Sex Gods.

Garrett was a reasonably experienced guy; he’d dated a lot, although he’d never done anything this wild. He’d certainly never had sex in public, aside from a few handjobs in deserted bathrooms and that one blowjob in an empty movie theater—nothing on this scale. He was a little shy that way.

On the other hand, he was hard, cock throbbing, and sweat was starting to trickle down his spine. It wouldn’t exactly take much to get him off. All he needed to do was take a step forward and make a fantasy come true.

While he was hesitating, someone stumbled into Alec, who got shoved into Garrett. Into Garrett’s hard-on, specifically.

The dim light glinted off Alec’s teeth as he smirked, rubbing against Garrett more purposefully. “You wanna hand with that, big boy?”

“No, Jesus!” Garrett yelped, frustration making him sound a lot sharper than he intended.

Alec stepped back, raising both hands in apology.

“Whoa, sorry. Just offering.”

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Garrett ran a hand down his face, trying to compose himself. “Sorry. I just… I’m a little on edge, you know?” They both chuckled at the understatement. “Look, I realize this is probably going to sound weird for you, all of you guys, but I just don’t, you know, do that.”

“What? Have casual sex?”

Garrett shrugged. “Not so much, no. Not anymore. And I’m kind of here as a reporter, for my job, so it’s weird.

Anyway, uh….” He trailed off, desperately trying to think of a way to change the topic.

“Okay then. Let’s get out of here. Go get another beer or something?”

Garrett nodded his agreement in relief, and they went back up to the roof, the only quiet place to talk. There was hardly anyone up there at all now; Garrett assumed either it was getting a bit late or they were all downstairs fucking. He kind of wondered why Alec wasn’t down there with the others, but hey, the guy said he was too hot. And he did just have sex on stage a little while ago. Whatever.

In fact, when Garrett consulted his Blackberry, he saw that it was nearly two-thirty in the morning.

Alec had kicked his feet up on a beat-up coffee table and was yawning, giving Garrett a gorgeous view of his firm chest as he stretched. “How long have you lived here in San Fran?”

Alec asked out of the blue, breaking their fairly comfortable silence.

“Uh. Pretty much forever, I guess,” Garrett answered, the “why?” evident in his tone.

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“I need to go clothes shopping, and tomorrow morning’s kind of my only free time to do it. Recommend any good places to hit?”

Garrett nodded and asked what sort of clothes Alec was looking for, rattled off a few likely shops, and started trying to describe how to get there from the crappy hotel the company had Alec booked in.

The guy grinned hugely, patting down his bare arms and the thin fabric of his boxer-briefs. “Got any paper I can write that down on?”

Garrett found himself smiling again. It must have been because he was so tired that his internal censor had gone to sleep, and he heard himself say, “Look, I’m not doing anything tomorrow morning, why don’t I just show you?

Maybe we can take in a few local sights, too, since you’ve never been to San Francisco before?”

Which was how Garrett found himself stripping off for bed, alarm clock set for an ungodly hour considering that it was almost 4 a.m., his Blackberry on his bedside table set with Alec’s number on display, and a plan for shopping and sight-seeing with a guy he barely knew anything about other than the kinds of faces he made when he came.

THE morning was bright. And early. Very bright. And also very early. Two cups of coffee and a shower and a profane amount of sugar in the form of Cocoa Puffs, frozen waffles with syrup, maple-cured bacon, and a Frappuccino from When Work Is a Pleasure |
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Starbucks, and Garrett’s brain was mostly functioning at normal levels.

He got out his cell phone as he left Starbucks and dialed the number that’d been taunting him all morning.

“Hey, Alec?”

“Huh?” was the reply he got, after a short delay.

His sweat suddenly turned cold. “Uh, yeah. Alec? Alec Greene? Damn, I hope I didn’t program in the wrong number—”

The guy on the other end interrupted his panicked babble by clearing his throat. “No, yeah, sorry, this is Alec.

It’s just, that’s my stage name, and I’m not used to hearing it in other contexts yet.”

“Ah, okay. That makes sense. So, um, this is Garrett.

Kowalski. From last night? The reporter.”

Alec’s laughter over the phone made Garrett smile in return. “Yeah, I remember. So are you still up for taking me shopping, then?”

“Yeah. I’m in my car. What’s the address of your hotel?”

They worked out the details, and Garrett was there fifteen minutes later, with a latte for Alec in the passenger cup holder, hoping he wasn’t being a total dork. The guy had sounded uncaffeinated, and Garrett knew he hated shopping enough already without having a headache from a lack of coffee on top of that. So. Yeah.

Alec, it turned out, was both very grateful for the latte and
loved
shopping. Like, a lot. In a very queeny, flamingly gay way. Which, in the Castro? Was really saying something.

The shop clerks loved him, of course; how could they not When Work Is a Pleasure |
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with a body like his? And he was polite and respectful and had clearly done his time working retail at some point.

After the third time Garrett tried to get Alec’s attention and the guy ignored him long enough for Garrett to start getting nervous, Alec came over and wrapped his arm around Garrett’s waist, leaning in close.

“Hey, how about this? When it’s just us two, I’m Justin.

Just a guy, a new friend hanging out with you. Alec’s the porn star; Justin’s a normal guy.”

Garrett nodded, trying not to get lost in how good Alec—

Justin—smelled. “Yeah, okay. Justin,” he agreed. “Um, how about this shirt?” he asked, remembering why he’d called the guy over in the first place.

Alec—no, Justin—tilted his head and gave the shirt a suspicious look. Then turned the same look on Garrett. “I know you’re gay,” he said, shaking his head. “Are you colorblind?”

Garrett smacked him with the floral-cuffed button-down and pouted as he went back to pawing through shirts for

“Something dramatic—only tasteful, this time, you giant dork.”

They spent what felt like
hours
shopping. Garrett was the kind of guy who only shopped when he desperately had to. He went in, got what he needed, and got out quickly, as if he were on some tactical military campaign and would explode if he stayed inside too long. Maybe he’d watched too many James Bond movies, but whatever. Some of those guys were hot. And he hated shopping, which was the point here.

Garrett hated it. Justin loved it.

And Garrett? Was loving shopping with Justin.

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Well. Loving and hating, mixed together. Justin was fucking gorgeous, and his smiles, his laughter, made Garrett weak in the knees and ache in the balls. Garrett wanted to shove him up against the three-way mirror that Justin was checking his ass out in and kiss and maul him until he groaned the way “Alec” did in the porno movies.

And Justin wasn’t helping at all. He was flirting like hell with the clerks, with the other shoppers who were checking him out, and with Garrett. He knew he was beautiful. He knew he had a gorgeous body. He liked the attention. He teased Garrett a little, mentioning that he knew Garrett had seen his movies—“How sweet”—with a flutter of his long eyelashes like a drag queen diva.

He was also super-touchy, and if he didn’t keep his hands off Garrett’s ass, Garrett wasn’t going to be able to control himself for much longer.

THEY stopped for a late breakfast/brunch once Garrett was loaded down with at least half a dozen bags. They still had a couple of hours to kill, so Garrett took him to Chinatown for dim sum and then for a walk around North Beach and up to Coit Tower.

And a weird thing happened halfway through the food.

Justin stopped acting like a flirty, cocky gym-bunny and turned into a really awesome guy. Not that he wasn’t fun to be around before, but he said thoughtful things, pointed out interesting people to look at, and framed and then took some gorgeous photos of the tower with his digital camera.

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And somehow, Garrett kind of almost forgot about

“Alec,” he was having such a great time with “Justin.”

It was more than a little schizophrenic.

“So, uh, can I ask you something?” Garrett asked as they leaned against the windows looking out at the views of the bay from the Tower.

“Only if you tell me if that’s Alcatraz first,” Justin answered, taking another few pictures.

Garrett laughed. “Nope, that one’s Treasure Island; Alcatraz is out that window.” He pointed.

Justin moved and started playing with his zoom. “So what’d you want to ask?”

There wasn’t anyone in the tower but them at the moment; no better time to ask. “How’d you get into this? I mean, off the record. Tell me about it?”

Justin shrugged and kept taking photos while he answered. “I’ve been doing this for less than a year. I was working at a gym as a personal trainer with my friends, Mike and Tom. One of Tom’s clients turned out to be a porno director and they got to talking. Tom started doing it; then Mike, his boyfriend, joined him. And after a few months of them harassing me and never shutting up about it, I decided to give it a try, see what it was like.”

“And? What
was
it like?”

“It was… a little weird. But I was with Tom and Mike, and I’d had sex with both of them before; I’ve known them forever, and sometimes we’d just have a casual threesome.”

He glanced at Garrett from behind the camera, checking his reaction. Garrett nodded, indicating that it wasn’t a big deal, When Work Is a Pleasure |
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so Alec continued. “A lot of the guys are escorts, too, but I don’t want to do that. The videos are good because everyone’s tested regularly and it’s safe, a controlled environment. And I’m a bit on the older side; I’ll be thirty in just a few years. Hawk Studios was the only place that didn’t want me to lie about that in my bio.”

“Really? I’d have guessed you were younger,” Garrett said. “I think it’s the freckles.”