Last time Tony’s glasses had nosed too deep into what he considered the off-limit thickets of his private life was when a few months ago – he’d turned twenty seven just a fortnight before – they’d suggested creams for his budding, untimely, itchy piles. This time, as he weaved his way through the damp summer throngs of other lone beings finished with their late Friday evening’s work and heading home or wandering off to more questionable districts for an early night’s stiff drink, his glasses suggested he have sex. A fine establishment two stone-throws away – Warriors’ Repose was its name – offered first timers a free go. He blinked the ad away. After an ad for sleeping pills (‘nip you needs in the bud’) it was back, this time with a full-bosomed animation and red all-caps flashing ‘free’. He opened the adjoined map to said fine establishment, blinked the ad away, more irritated than angry, and took the second street to his left, into the Asian quarter. He looked up when the map told him he’d arrived. He’d stopped before a dusty restaurant, identical to so many locals-only chop suey shops. It had no customers. He took a few steps back, scanned the storefront and then the empty facade and glanced back at the tatty ground floor and wondered what this was all about when a wrinkled and scowling matron, her dyed jet-black hair pulled back into a face-lifting bun, got into the doorway and asked him what he wanted.
“Nothing,” he said. “I thought this was… eh–”
“I see. First time, eh?” She grinned. “Come in.”
When the chimes above the door had died down, the warm silence of rugged flooring and a few plush seats dropped over him like a weighted blanket. Rhythmic floorboards hinted at some of the covert proceedings upstairs. He heard a distant crack, a man scream, a woman scold with a voice like a revving moped, and he stopped in his tracks to the empty bar. The matron turned around and looked straight into him.
“Some like spicy. You like spicy?”
He shook his head and apologised with some disgust. “Oh no,” he said.
“Sure, we have large menu. You want shower first?”
“That’d be nice.”
“There,” she pointed to the back of the long, narrow room, to the door next to a staircase. The door led into a broom closet.
“Other door,” the matron shouted.
“Yeah, I got that,” he mumbled.
The shower and the provided flannel bathrobe made him feel surprisingly clean. He cowered with guilt when, as he nipped out, a small and tired woman in French maid attire got in to clean up after him.
“Upstairs,” the matron shouted when he erred back into the fake restaurant. She marched towards him and took hold of his bundle of clothes. “I’ll keep this,” she said. “Room two-o-two. Xin will see you.”
“Sheen?”
“No, Xin, short ‘e’.” She pointed her index up.
He nodded. “Shin,” he said.
Up the tight staircase, muffled cries and groans of reposing warriors savouring the evening’s specials percolated through the thin walling. The second floor, dimmer than the first, was afloat with more distant carnal humdrum. The door to 202 was left ajar. The room was empty. When he closed the door, the hum of air-conditioning snuffed out any residual hints of next-door sex. Just as well.
He waited. The small, windowless room was painted black, the monster bed decked in a single dark grey bedsheet that looked waterproof. A pile of cushions of the same material was stacked up against the wall. A dark brown medicine cabinet, held up by two off-white shelf brackets, hung at the head end of the bed about a foot under the ceiling. He was pushing his fingers into the mattress when Xin, with the curtest of knocks, swivelled in. The corners of Tony’s mouth dropped ever so little.
“You’re a guy,” he said.
“You’re a perceptive one,” Xin said.
“Can’t do guys. Sorry. Nothing personal.” Tony got off the bed and headed for the door. Xin leaned against it. It closed. Tony thought of brushing the boy aside. He wasn’t big.
“Mei’s not going to be happy if she sees you downstairs now. You’ll get the beggars and choosers routine,” he said. “She can be a bitch. She got your clothes? Yeah. Thought so. Well, tell you what, I’ll get you a drink, we have a chat, or not, I can give you a massage if you want, we’ll see what that leads to and then you leave and everybody’s happy. All right?”
“Quotas?” Tony asked.
Xin looked sheepish. “Something like that.”
“Fuck’s sake.” Tony shook his head, sighed, and sat back on the bed. “Fine. I guess.”
“Something stiff? Small scotch? It’s all cheap stuff, but the scotch’s all right.”
“Scotch’s fine.”
“Make yourself at home,” Xin said and, yin-yang polyester bathrobe, smile, wink and all, flowed back out.
The bed was sturdier than Tony had expected. It didn’t creak or move. The frame was industrial square steel tubing sprayed black with nice, even welds. He was testing its bounce when Xin came in.
The miserly scotch – courtesy of Mei, no doubt – was all right. Xin, it dawned on Tony when he’d finished the drink in silence, was all right as well. He really could do with a blowjob or any job. He could do with closing his eyes and falling asleep.
He realised he had closed his eyes – this startled him – and couldn’t remember putting his empty glass down. Xin was massaging his shoulders and a tender spot being kneaded by what would be his first guy – if it came to that – made him grunt. Xin slipped down Tony’s scratchy bathrobe, had him lie down on the bed, and in the greasy light, dimmer and hotter than before, under the muffled, mechanical whirr of the air-con, Tony reclined and noticed that his cock had taken a course of action he would never have suspected it would ever take. Xin didn’t waste any time, bent over, and started sucking him off.
By instinct Tony took hold of the back of Xin’s head when he got close. His last blowjob dated back years, and of the few he’d had, none matched Xin’s in urgency. The boy had technique. He slowed down as he had every time before and, Tony’s hands notwithstanding, popped off the throbbing cock before Tony could cum.
“Oh shit man,” Tony said. He let his head drop back into the stack of pillows. The mattress cover had got hot and damp with sweat. “Why won’t you finish me off?”
“I like to take my time. Makes it all worth it.”
“Is that all right with the downstairs bitch? Doesn’t she want you to suck off dozens of clients per hour? Especially the free ones?”
“She believes in service.”
“Ha.”
“She believes good service is the only way to a customer’s heart.”
“Right,” he said and groaned. Xin was back at it. A dozen slow bobs later Tony held Xin’s head down and started fucking his throat. The boy gagged, struggled off the cock, coughed, and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe. Tony looked at Xin sitting in between his legs and at his wistful cock. It jerked in protest.
“Fuck man, don’t do that,” Tony said.
Xin sat up. “I could ask the same of you. This isn’t working. I need to keep those hands of yours away.”
“Why?”
“I’ve told you before. Service.”
“Fuck service,” Tony said and flopped back on his back. “I just wanna cum.”
Xin had got up and rummaged in the medicine cabinet. “Handcuffs or wrist cuffs? Your choice,” he said and dropped bondage sleeves on the bed. “I can’t find anything else. These cupboards need sorting out.”
Tony, confused, picked up one of the leather sleeves. Xin dropped a wad of rope on the bed.
“I don’t do pervy shit,” Tony said.
Xin looked him in the eyes, crouched in between his legs, cupped his balls, and started massaging Tony’s shaft under the ridge.
“How long before you try taking over?” Xin said. “Ten seconds, twenty?”
“Oh fuck.” Tony screwed his eyes. “Just don’t stop this time. Please. I’m going to cum.”
Tony started fucking Xin’s hand. With no real effort, Xin followed the jerks and lightened his touch. With only his index and thumb in a loose O he grazed Tony’s ridge. He was about to let go.
“Fuck, no, not again,” Tony said, propped himself on his elbows, then sat upright, got hold of Xin’s wrist and started pumping and wanking. “I have to cum.”
Xin let go off the cock and pushed Tony’s hands aside. “A-ah, not yet,” he said, and half-playfully pushed Tony back.
Tony groaned and flopped down into the mattress with a squelch. A string of precum tethered his cock to his navel. He covered his face with his forearm and panted, his mouth slack and open. He reached for his cock with his other arm. Xin swatted it away, but Tony continued to hump.
“I’d say that was about twenty seconds. Better than I thought. Still, not good enough. Right arm, please.” Xin held up the sleeve. Tony sighed, but slid into it. Xin tightened the lacing and the buckles, did Tony’s other arm, and tied off the D-rings at the end of the mitts to the head corners of the bed. Tony was soft after Xin got his ankles tied down as well.
“Told you it would turn me off. This isn’t going to work. I’m no longer interested.”
Xin tutted, cupped Tony’s balls, and went back to sucking.
Tony groaned and closed his eyes. “You’re gonna kill me,” he said. When the boy didn’t speed up, Tony tried to force some tempo into Xin’s languid bobbing. The boy followed Tony’s jerks and humps and kept his punishing pace far too slow. After a few creeping minutes, even though he wasn’t quite hard yet, Tony gave up trying to force movement into the imperturbable Xin. Somewhere between the precise, endless, slow sucking and quiet slurps, the hum of the air con, and his straining to test the give in the spreadeagle, Tony had felt his need build. He was back to humping and looked at the boy making him suffer, sitting cross-legged in the nook of his crotch in his navy blue and gold yin-yang robes. His hands cupped Tony’s cock and balls and his half-long fringe – black with the tips dyed reddish-brown in spiky strands – moved up and down in front of his cock like a theatre curtain. When he worked on the cockhead, all Tony saw were gentle lips opening and closing, following the contours of his knob, suckling it, teasing it, with the occasional slobber and slurp and lick and pop that made him clench. Concentrating on those mesmerising lips, those sensuous instruments of torture that wouldn’t grant him the bliss he so craved, made his need a thousand times worse. Tony moaned, was about to beg Xin to, please, make him cum, knew that the boy would only smirk and look him in the eyes while inflicting his hellish suckling, and dropped his head back into the plush stack of pillows. Xin looked up – Tony had closed his eyes now – increased the pace, took note of his client’s heavier breathing, brought him to the edge by pumping his cock while sucking – it took about ten seconds – and let go.
Tony strained and yelped before he decided he would not let himself react. He kept his eyes closed, snorted, tried to control his panting, and willed his screwed-up expression of need to relax into half a poker face. While his cock was still twitching – he could even feel his arsehole spasm – he tested the bondage once more. The sleeves creaked and that was all – he remained pinned. He humped out a short and angry fuck, as if it would help him to cum on his own. When nothing happened he looked up and realised he had to look annoyed and in need. He’d shown far more than he wanted. Xin wiped some drool off of his smile and looked Tony in the eyes. “Enjoying yourself?” he said.
“How much longer?” Tony said.
“I don’t know. Depends on you, really. You’re taking this far too well.”
“I guess there’s no point in asking you to let me go? I won’t make a fuss.”
“Mei wouldn’t–”
Tony jerked up as far as the ropes allowed. “It’s all part of a con, right? I’ve been had. Right? This going to cost me a fortune, isn’t it?”
A fleeting suggestion of exposed ill intent crossed Xin’s otherwise innocuous smile. He opened his mouth as if to answer, left it at that, and bent back down to continue torturing Tony’s cock with sickening pleasure. When Xin’s warm breath and soft lips and delicate lapping hit Tony – torn between anger and feeling dangerously vulnerable and never having been so needy in his life – he decided he might as well try to get the most out the scam but nonetheless swore, either at the boy not letting him cum or at his own stupidity, he didn’t know. For the moment, he revelled in Xin’s – he had to admit – breathtaking skill. His cock felt harder than it had ever felt. What Xin did to it he’d never dreamed of experiencing. Whether he’d cum or not, neither Mei nor the boy could keep him here forever and that would be the end of it.
When he caught himself huffing and shifting and looking up in desperate need at his cock – his resolve to relax and enjoy it had long faded – he wondered whether, in fact, Mei and the boy could keep him here forever. In between his legs, like a statue, sat Xin. His sleeves, when they grazed Tony’s balls, sent jolts of uncalled-for need up his groin. The statue sucked gently – it was all it did – and slowed down every time Tony humped or groaned or swore or got too close to the statue’s taste. The two bits of rope holding his ankles down wouldn't unravel – he’d twisted and kicked his feet in all possible ways and nothing worked. He’d long stopped trying to wrestle his arms out of the sleeves. The leather, even though damp with sweat, gripped tight. When he ground his teeth after a long, blank, featureless bout of Xin’s sucking – never getting Tony too close, always keeping him feverish with need and concentration – the boy got up. Tony looked up half dazed and surprised, relieved that that might be the end of the long night of torture. He didn’t care any longer that he hadn’t cum, as long as this stopped. Xin rummaged in the medicine cabinet and dropped a ball gag on the bed.
“Fuck off,” Tony said. “I don’t do that.”
“It’s for your own good. You’re grinding your teeth.”
“My teeth can take it.”
“I can make you wear it,” the boy said.
“Try me. I’ll bite your fucking face off.”
“Not by force,” Xin said, and crouched back in between Tony’s legs. “Just gentle persuasion.”
Their eyes locked for a moment. Xin enjoyed the look of horror on his victims’ faces as he ran his tongue over his lips and latched back onto the underside of their glistening, weeping cockhead when all they wanted was being released, cum or no cum, and they realised he wouldn’t let them go and the torture that felt so good would go on for much longer. Tony hissed a long ‘fuck’ through clenched incisors. The renewed blank, featureless, gentle, grinding suckle on his tip crushed him. His slit was on fire. When he kept still the need to hump became unbearable, when he humped an animalistic need would take over his senses. He went back and forth, erratically, through countless, self-reinforcing cycles. It had to be well past midnight.
“Could you, please, please, do something?” Tony said, hoarse from moaning.
“I am?”
“Anything but that, please?”
“Gag?”
Tony kept quiet. The lapping grind went on. He broke when Xin started stroking his balls as well.
“What?” Xin said.
“I said ‘gag’.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. But, please, for the love of god–” Tony had to catch his breath. “–do something else. And please, please make me cum, I don’t care how much it’s going to cost.”
“Cost? This is free,” Xin said. “All of this is free, whether you like it or not, and it goes on for as long as it goes on, whether you like it or not.”
Xin got off the foot end of the bed, picked up the gag that was still lying left of Tony’s pinned body and strapped it in between Tony’s teeth. “Better,” he said. “Now, you wanted something else, you said?”
“Yes please,” Tony mumbled.
Xin stood on the bed, rummaged in the cabinet, and tossed a box of disposable gloves and a clear plastic bottle between Tony’s legs. “Good timing,” he said, “my jaw was getting tired.” He crouched back in his working spot, snapped on a pair of thin, cream coloured gloves and slicked them up with lube from the bottle. “No latex allergies?” he said.
Tony shook his head.
“Good.” Xin made a loose O with three fingers, hooked the cock back with his other hand, and twisted slowly with the loose O under Tony’s corona. Tony head’s shot up. He tensed. He willed himself not to show dread, but shook his head anyway.
“Please, no,” he mumbled around the gag.
“What? This is something else,” Xin said, “as per your request. You didn’t ask for more, just something else. I’ve got many variations on the same theme, you know. And at the risk of boring you – or taking your mind off what I’m doing – these gloves are latex. As smooth as they come.” Xin, instead of the slow twists, gave Tony’s cockhead some full, abhorrently satisfying, wet, frictionless strokes – Tony giggled in giddy satisfaction – before going back to the frustrating twists. Tony groaned. “Cocks can get overly sensitive if you work on them for too long with textured gloves, as most are. I could do this until morning, and you wouldn’t feel the slightest discomfort. We wouldn’t want any discomfort distracting you, would we?”
Tony humped.
“Are you even listening?” Xin said.
“Make me hum.”
“Make you hum?”
“Please make me hum…”
Xin kept twisting his wrist, but had to slow down in cycles. At each slowdown Tony pleaded indistinctly. After a few near edges, Xin added a light squeeze to the twists as he reached the ridge of the cock with his thumb. In a dozen movements, Tony was back to the point where anything except those gentle twists would have made him cum. Xin slowed down.
“Fuck’s sake, god, no!” Tony screamed. He jerked his entire frame off the bed and at once tried to pull his cock out of Xin’s fingers and knock the boy off the bed with a quivering thigh and hump himself to orgasm in the boy’s hands.
Xin ducked and looked on in surprise. Tony, off-white like the latex gloves, shook his head in panic.
“What’s wrong?” Xin said.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t keep me there.” Tony was panting. “Stop slowing down or let me go, please. Not when I’m that close. It’s too much.”
Xin took hold of the cock and tried the twists again. Tony fought him.
“I see,” Xin said, got a small strap out the the cabinet and in an unfair fight tethered Tony’s balls to the bottom of the bed. “That should calm you down.” He nuzzled back in between Tony’s legs, sitting down on the rope that pulled on Tony’s balls, stretching them even more.
That one wild jerk to get Xin off, Tony realised, had made the immediacy of the torture bearable. Whenever he did more than mild rocking of his groin now – and the urge was stronger than before – he felt a dangerous tug on his balls. The forced stillness at the hands of the boy was so unnatural he felt like crying and screaming at the same time. No amount of self-imposed distractions could keep him from babbling and pleading. He could feel the gut-wrenching build-up to another orgasm that the boy, there was no doubt about it any more, would let fizzle out by lightening and slowing down his delicate fondling to nothing at all. He bit into the gag. He screwed his eyes. He held his breath. Xin slowed down and, like clockwork, the most monumental orgasm of Tony’s life, the hundredth of the night, fizzled out. Both waited. Tony knew what was coming. He sobbed when the twisting started anew. When he felt the pressure in his balls climb to the point where Xin would stop, he cried. He even knew how many twists it would take.
“Xin!” A scowling Mei crashed through the door. Her temporal arteries were ripe to pop. “What are you doing? Eh?”
Both men scraped together the crumbs of their wits.
“Well, the usual. Ma’am.”
“You know what time it is? Almost twelve!” She screamed the time again and stomped her foot at the last ‘twelve’. “What you think you doing, eh? Time precious! Get it! Now!” While she screeched on in her own impenetrable language Xin fumbled his robes together and with the elegance of a bug whose legs suddenly got too long to handle clambered off the bed and out of the room.
Mei stared Tony down. Her narrowed eyes glinted like boiling pitch. “You said you didn’t like spicy?” she said and leaned over.
Tony shook his head. He didn’t like spicy, he tried to mumble. It was Xin who…
“You horny? You wanna cum?” she said, unimpressed.
He nodded like a maniac. She grabbed his cock and wanked fast enough for all her chunky jewellery to jingle, ring-spangled earlobes included. He tensed and held his breath. “Oh fuck,” he said. “Oh fuck…”
She flew off his cock.
He gasped, looked at her in horror, looked at his cock, and looked back at her. He tensed and tensed more. He could see himself cum. He had to. She smirked. He scrunched his eyes and fucked the air as hard as he could, impervious to the pain in his outstretched balls. That loathsome pressure at the very root of his cock flinched, lost its strength, twitched, and made it feel like his cock, instead of blasting its thick load, had been injected to bursting point with some gel-like substance that remained glued along the way out. Nothing happened. It wouldn’t even ooze out. He looked at her. He didn’t understand. He panted. He was close to hyperventilating.
“No cum for you,” she said. She cackled like the Devil’s arse and left.
He stared at his twitching cock and, screaming and spitting now, swore her to hell and beyond.
“Five minutes,” Tony heard the cunt say in the corridor. Xin came in. Tony was still panting. His purple cock throbbed with his heartbeat, frozen in a hard, forty-five degree angle over his stomach. Xin tossed icepacks all over it. Tony yelped, humped, and tried to get the ice off.
“I’ve got five minutes and an angry Mei, so I’ll be brief.” He grabbed fresh gloves from the box and slid them on. “I much rather would’ve teased you with the idea, while I was edging you, but it can’t be helped. This–” He held up a pair of smokey, half-translucent plastic loops. “–is a chastity belt. I’m going to lock you in it. It’s a full belt. With a cock and balls like yours this is the most comfortable option.” He adjusted the loops, undid the leather strap around Tony’s balls, cleaned up his tackle with a cold, wet cloth, and crouched back between his legs. “I suggest you don’t struggle, or Mei will send in the goons and you don’t want the goons.” Xin adjusted one loop around Tony’s waist and the other between his legs. Tony, having realised what the boy had said, got louder. With the ball strap gone, he tried kicking the boy off the bed. Xin grabbed him by the balls and clenched his teeth. His face had hardened to ice. “You fancy two slabs of meat shoving you into this thing? No adjustments, nothing? I don’t think so, so calm the fuck down.” Tony shivered. The loop Xin tightened around his waist made a plastic ratcheting noise, the one between his legs clicked into place at his lower back. Xin towelled off Tony’s cock once more, rubbed it clean with an alcohol swab, twisted open a disposable plastic vial, squeezed a dollop of goop into a cylindrical recess in the crotch piece of the belt, slid it over Tony’s shrivelled cock, clicked it in the loop over his pubis, and ratcheted the cock-sleeve, alternating front and back, adjusting Tony’s balls, tight against his taint. He bent over and had a closer look. “Cock feeling OK? Looks like it. Now’s the time to complain.”
Tony nodded. “Fine,” he said.
Xin peeled open a sachet with a blue topped syringe, pushed it into a slot in the belt over Tony’s cock, told Tony not to move, and in increments injected half of its ice-cold contents into the belt.
“There,” Xin said. “I’m going to untie you. You’re gonna behave, or shall I send in the clowns?”
Tony nodded. Xin got the sleeves off last. The leather had left red marks where folds had pressed into Tony’s skin. He sat up, winced, and grabbed the plastic hoop around his waist. “It’s tight,” he said.
“It’ll settle. The plastic will warm up. Go and see Mei now. You’ve got one more minute. And wear your bathrobe.” Xin tossed it to Tony and went back to sorting out the mess of gloves and icepacks and wrappers he’d left on the bed.
“Go!” Xin shouted.
Tony stood frozen for another two or three seconds, and stomped downstairs.
Mei grinned like a cockroach. “Feel good? Happy with our service?”
Tony didn’t answer. The blinds in the restaurant were down. In the front, having a meal, sat the two goons.
“Don’t try get out,” she said and tapped the belt with her ringed knuckles through his bathrobe. “You’re glued in.”
“What?”
“Skin glue. Medical. It won’t come off.”
Tony tugged at the belt. It was welded to his cock. Pliers could no longer deal with it.
“How much do you want?”
“Want? Me? Nothing. First time free. Second time, you pay.”
“How much?”
“Second time,” she said louder. One of the goons looked up.
“No point in insisting, I guess?”
“You learn,” she said.
“Can I have my clothes back?”
“Sure. You want shower first?” She was still grinning.
“Piss off.”
She shrugged like a butthurt diva, retrieved his clothes from behind the bar and handed them over. He got dressed and checked his pockets. Nothing seemed to be missing. He went to the door. The left goon let him out. The right one didn’t look up from his plate.
The damp summer throngs of lonely beings finished with late work had thinned out but the air hadn’t cooled. It was one of those strawberry-orange full-mooned nights where people wouldn’t bother closing their windows even as they reached howling and ordinarily private pinnacles of ecstasy. Tony adjusted his pants and started home.
Two storefronts further, the brothel’s chimes dangled.
“See you soon,” Mei shouted. “Good night! Bye bye!” Her cackle died down as she closed the door and locked it.