The first boy was called Jed; they say you remember your first. Shit, not my first fuck, of course not! I can’t remember his name. Or face. Or anything. He was a means to an end, that’s all. No, I’m talking about the first to play this particular game with me. Jed was thin and pale and young—of course—and I remember being surprised at how easy it was to persuade him back to the flat. I was careful to choose one I knew was over the tenuous cusp of legality, then a couple of smokes and the promise of a tenner and he came with me willingly enough. It was important—the willingness.

He’d been a ‘sniffer’—one of those young men who sniffs habitually, like they have rampant hay fever, or snort too many noxious substances. I never bothered asking which it was. It was a background irritation, and I wanted to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t phrase the words properly. When he dropped his jeans and stood there, his naked body as pale and skinny as a bread stick, his bony arms folded awkwardly over a still-developing chest…well, it seemed churlish to be complaining about a bit of snot.

With him, I only took the game to the first step. I strapped him to the bed and he was only mildly nervous. I suspect he’d dabbled in S&M before; he had the weary, bored look that often comes from switching off when things get beyond your control. His passivity was intriguing. When I sat back and watched him lie there, he got a bit restless.

“What’re you gonna do?” he sniffed. Christ, it sounded like he wanted to know what car I drove, not whether I was going to carve him up and leave him in a gutter for the morning press to salivate over.

“It’s just a game,” I replied. “Indulge me.”

He stared at me as if realising for the first time I puzzled him. I sat on the edge of the bed, barely touching his thigh. I watched the tic of muscle in his leg, a trapped nerve protesting at the bondage. I was still fully dressed. He looked at my tented lap and licked his lips; that was the usual service for a tenner, obviously. He watched my hand stroke the object in my lap.

When he laughed aloud, it was a bit of a shock. It was a thin, nasal sound, like a sneer. “Where’d you get that?”

“It’s mine,” I said, slowly. I stroked; I slid my fingers around it, clasped it loosely and pumped very lazily. It could have been my cock—but it wasn’t.

“I know guns,” he said, defensively. “Dun’t scare me.”

I didn’t bother challenging him. When I look back on that time, I remember his wide, washed-out eyes, staring at it. The fascination was for the gun, not me. For a moment, his cock bobbed on his belly, responding to the icy thrill of potential danger. I remember that it was a thin, bent little shaft, only just starting to swell and poke out of the top of its tube of skin. I had little interest in it then, and maybe he could see that. The puzzlement returned to his pinched little face.

When I rolled the chamber, he jerked on the bed. His smirk looked like it had stopped halfway across his lips; it was replaced with a grimace. There was a flicker of childlike shock in the pale eyes.

“It’s just a game,” I repeated. “There’s only one bullet.” I leant over him slowly and the mattress creaked beneath us. I stroked the muzzle of the gun along his neck and watched the tendons tighten. “One in six chance that it even fires something.” He twisted his head away sharply, his face and neck flushing red with the effort.

“Fucker—” he grunted, or something like that. I wasn’t really listening. I hadn’t chosen him for his witty repartee.

I watched his heart start to speed up, his ribcage straining up and down to contain it. His veins bulged blue under his thin skin. My gaze followed all the way from his clenched toes to his sharp pelvic bones, to his tight, protuberant nipples. One of them was pierced, I remember that. I might even have tugged at it, but not with any force. I was interested to see that his budding erection went the way of all flesh. The shaft shrivelled quickly to mere creases of pale, flaccid skin.

I knew then that this didn’t work for me. Jed. This first one was only that; the first of others.

I think I sighed when I pressed my finger on the trigger. Maybe I laughed. Maybe that’s what the loud sound was, though it seemed like both of us had stopped breathing for that second. I found my senses suddenly clear, the sounds and smells of my sparse little flat very vivid. The sweat of the boy was acrid; my breath scratched like the branches of a bush at a bathroom window.

Like I said, I only took it to the first step with Jed.

Phil was the second.

God, what a porker he was after the stripling body of Jed! As tall as me, a little younger, his puppy fat plumping out over the waist of his jeans. His eyes were bright, no addiction scarring them yet. He’d found me, rather than my usually more cautious approach. I was just hanging around, reading a paper or something, and he came straight up to me and asked for money.

He even asked if I had somewhere we could go. I could imagine the tarmac of the shopping centre was rough on that soft flesh; he wouldn’t still be grinning if he were pressed against the brick wall in the dark shadows between the rental shop and the discount store.

Back at the flat, he stripped slowly, confidently, the trousers needing to be tugged down from around his hips. But I liked the look—I liked the swell of his belly and the soft flesh around his shoulders. His nipples were dark and shallow and the size of old pennies on the white of his chest.

Since my first, I’d had some time to marinate the rules of my game; to stroke and savour and suppose. Whatever the conclusions, my arousal was healthier than it had been for months. It was a different stimulation altogether.

I still bound him, but he seemed to enjoy it. The light of his eyes grew darker, as if he liked teetering on the unfamiliar brink of masochism. I didn’t think he’d ever done this before. I sat down on the edge of the bed again, beside his strapped body. The ties sank into his fleshy wrists.

“So what now?” he asked. He tried for insouciance, but his voice shook a little.

“Watch me,” I murmured, as I unzipped and pulled myself out of the confines of cotton underwear. It would be a pleasant change, to be observed rather than the observer. “It’s just a game.”

“Sure,” he said. “You the man.” He had a slight lisp, which was distracting. I hoped he wasn’t going to speak much; his words came from a cheap teenage novel.

The introduction of the gun made him catch his breath a little, but there was a flash of cunning in his eyes, and he stayed silent. I was interested to see he had a good-sized, robust erection. I stroked myself with one hand and at the same time I dragged the gun across his skin, keeping the same rhythm as my pumping, watching how the cold metal tugged at the thin hairs of his chest. The click of the trigger at the first step made him shudder, but when I looked back down to his groin he’d stayed hard; maybe it even swelled the more. I kept the gun nuzzled in at his neck and I let myself enjoy my own firm touch.

By the time I felt the climax uncurling in the pit of my groin, my other hand had crept down to the cushion of his stomach and was resting on his navel. The gun was palmed casually, but securely, its nose at the rim of his dark curly pubic hairs.

For a second, my orgasm distracted me. My body shook, though my hand stayed in place. I grunted, letting my seed spill out with sharp, shallow bursts of warmth and stickiness. Some of it spattered on to his belly, soft white viscous pearls shivering on a smooth palette.

“One in six chance,” I sighed. “For the second time.” I laid my warm, spent cock back on my lap, and I squeezed the trigger again.

His eyes were blank with the sudden onset of uncontrollable fear. He’d never thought I would make that second shot. For a moment, I thought he might choke on his own tongue as he bit it.

The second step. But still not right. I wouldn’t be going any further with Phil.

Danny had been a very biddable man—Danny, my third. Older than my previous choices; maybe from a home and family of his own. I saw it all in his eyes at the bar. Isolation; embarrassment; hunger. He was on his own and his gaze didn’t follow the buxom strippers like every other male in the place.

When I went to the men’s room, he followed me in. He was slim and short, but surprisingly graceful, a lean body inside tight faded trousers and a dull-coloured shirt. He hung back, maybe waiting to see if anyone else came in, but his eyes darted over me, an eager heat flickering there like a match’s sputtering flame in the pupils of a smoker.

I don’t remember much more of his features, to be honest, just those eyes. Standing in the cold, white, cracked-tiled room, I looked at him, questioningly.

“Just a hand job,” he said, hurriedly. I shrugged, and he moved quickly to the cubicle, watching my feet as they stepped in after him.

His hands were a little clumsy with his zip—nerves, I guess—but he knew what he was after. It wasn’t money, not like the others. I pumped him rather lazily, but it didn’t take long for him to grunt and ejaculate, and then I waited for him to ask for more.

He came back to the flat without any question. He stripped quickly, as if he disliked wearing his clothes, moving co-operatively under my hands, anticipating where I wanted him. I don’t know what he thought about the first step, but he didn’t flinch. Much. Of course, anything more would have been difficult with the bindings on his wrists and ankles.

“Thank you,” he whispered. It was ridiculous—of course it was!—but he looked grateful for the attention.

I remained hopeful of more from him. His body was athletic looking, with wiry limbs and a scattering of dark hair down from his ribs to his belly. The stomach muscles were developed, though it looked like he’d neglected them over the years. At one point, my hand brushed over his cheek, the gun clasped loosely and warmly between my fingers. His tongue slipped out and licked at the barrel as it slid past his mouth.

I came over him quite quickly—I enjoyed the growl he made in the back of his throat at each of my strokes—and the second step didn’t seem to faze him. I liked the way his back arched when I nudged the gun at his slackened belly; his cock was broad and short but it bobbed enthusiastically, swollen with its own eagerness. Then I untied him and pushed him to his knees beside the bed. I tugged his head to my groin. His mouth was warm and wet and a welcome haven for my recovering cock.

He’d obviously done it plenty of times before. It was enjoyable for us both, and I felt the stirrings of sensation returning in my groin. I saw him pumping furiously away at his own shaft, and I heard his breath grow faster and shallower as he got near to climaxing. I felt the sensual grip of his mouth on me, and heard the grunts of excitement from both of us, soft hiccups in the otherwise silent room.

The muzzle of the gun nudged at his ear, but he didn’t acknowledge it. His lean body was bowed below me, his eyes were closed. I waited until I saw the shudder of surrender run through his body and his head sink down against my groin, like a sexual supplicant. For that second, he was fully concentrated on the path of his own ecstasy.

“One in six chance,” I hissed. “The third shot.”

He’d begun to moan with the climax, but the sound was abruptly strangled in his throat. His head went back and he stared up at me. His mouth opened in a wavering ‘o’ shape, and my glistening cock sprang back out. The look of shock on his face was unmistakable. Seed spat itself out of him unheeded; his body was rigid with another kind of tension. He looked as if I’d betrayed him in the worst possible way.

Of course, there was nothing I owed Danny.

The third step was as far as I would go.

By the time I got to step four, I thought I knew what type to seek. I saw it all as a quest.

Cal was a risk—but a calculated one. Other eyes followed his swagger across the club; other hands groped his ass; other mouths cajoled and begged to suck at him. It was my eyes that he caught and held.

“What do you want?” I asked. I could have meant a drink; or it could have been a challenge.

“Something different,” he replied, and it sounded as if he also meant it on several levels. I liked the way he didn’t bother me with irritating chat. I paid for a round of drinks, then he followed me out of there.

Away from the fluorescent lights of the dance floor, he didn’t look as good; not so confident; not so young. His dirty green eyes shifted constantly, searching for assurance. Cal looked like he had no foundation in his life—that he eschewed the crowd. Or maybe it eschewed him.

He didn’t belong. Or that’s what he thought about himself.

He was amusingly coy about stripping, placing his clothes carefully on a chair, cautious yet embarrassed at the same time. His body was dark-hued, and there was the scar of an old operation on his torso where the skin still glistened in a lighter shade. There was dried sweat on his flesh from his earlier time in the club; maybe he thought I’d offer him a shower.

The self-consciousness lasted no time at all.

At first he resisted the bindings. The veins in his arms stood out in a dark violet colour against his skin—his hips thrust up at me, vainly. His thrashing about provoked a thick, heavy erection that jutted aggressively from his groin, glistening darkly against his black hairs. I moved my position beside him so that when I came my seed spilled on his thighs rather than his belly. The opaque whiteness looked very striking against the dark colouring. My breath took longer to steady than before.

He had no other problems with the steps. It seemed that Cal dealt with his displacement from the rest of society by creating his own; I don’t think he heard much of what I said, or acknowledged what I did to him beyond the concentration around his own cock. When I knelt him down on the floor, his sucking of me was hasty, and his grip inept. I batted his hands away with the muzzle of the gun, and although he slathered away for a while, I didn’t climax again. Step three was a disappointment of sorts; I began to question my choice even then.

I moved him back on to the bed and on to his belly. Fresh sweat ran down between his shoulder blades and he wriggled awkwardly. His cock was uncomfortable under his prone body. He’d not come yet; but his expectations of me wouldn’t necessarily be met.

I knelt up over him, restricting the movement of his legs, my own skin damp with sweat, my inner thighs slick against his hips. I put my free hand to his left buttock and pulled the cheeks apart. A dusting of dark hairs clung stickily to my fingers, but I could see my way easily.

“Tease…” he ground out. “You gonna fuck me already…?”

I didn’t answer him. I ran the middle finger of my right hand along the crack, listening to his sharp intake of frustrated breath. My cock was semi-erect, nestling comfortably at the crease where his ass met the muscles of his leg. I moved my finger away and probed the gun along the channel instead. Step four.

He gasped with the sudden cold touch. “What the fuck’s that?” His voice was hoarse. I saw the tension in the muscles of his shoulders as he went rigid beneath me.

“A one in six chance,” I said, softly, as I watched the snub metal nose peel open his puckered hole. His skin seemed to shrivel back from it, in shock or fear, I didn’t know. I rolled the gun gently against the pink skin, watching the first centimetre of its muzzle press its way through the initial resistance of the muscles.

“Step four,” I murmured, almost to myself.

It seemed that my calculated risk had one too many variables. Cal’s control of himself had seemed fragile from the start, and his reaction then had been to vomit on my very basic and—luckily—replaceable bedding.

The steps stopped there.

I misjudged step five; I admit it. It had been too long since four, and maybe I chose with more desperation than decision. I don’t like to think that was the case.

Otto was young, and aimless, and drunk. He said he wasn’t ready to go home yet, that he’d not yet found the ‘buzz’ he craved. He laughed at each stage of his slurred monologue. He was looking for some real excitement, he whispered in my ear; he’d already done it all, been to every game, ‘read every book of life’. I continued to be disappointed at the lack of both imagination and conversational skills in society today.

His companions had obviously come to the end of their youthful tolerance and left him at a disused bus stop. He wore a sports strip, he exuded athleticism, his speech was full of references to competition and achievement. It was mildly entertaining. He had no idea where I took him, but he was willing enough to shed his clothing and collapse his muscular body on to my bed. I suspected that he’d played this game of life more than once; he’d been past the first few chapters of this book. He just had no idea where the plot took him in the end.

“I like fuck games,” he announced cheerfully, like he drank beer, or he wore denim. I had tuned out most of his speech, and in particular the grating bonhomie. Not for the first time, I wondered what exactly he had been drinking—or what slice of life had produced such a zealous participant.

Because—obviously—he did like games. The first four steps went well. His body appeared even younger than his attitude, but it was well-kept, and lightly tanned from the good summer we’d had that year. I liked the breadth of his freckled shoulders and his strong neck; I liked the almost hairless chest and the large cock that swelled quickly to a dark pink flush, straining from its sheath and dripping generous drops on his belly in its eagerness.

The enthusiasm was wearing, though. He tried to dictate his own binding and was reluctant to be untied; he expected some kind of oral play with my ejaculated seed, and was frustrated when I showed no interest in it after its expulsion over his body. He sucked well enough, though too quickly, and when the gun nudged at his head at step three, he leant into it as a puppy might seek your hand to have its ears scratched. He came himself after only a few strokes. I watched with interest as his cock spewed its fulsome contents on my carpet, his touch barely needed to make it climax, its turgidity still maintained afterwards.

His ass pushed back at the gun at step four. No perception of violation there. Even I was surprised.

“Fuck me with it, man,” he grunted. It aroused me, the bold, greedy energy of him, and after I removed the muzzle, I forced myself into him and fucked him to my completion. He shuddered with it, as if he felt the spasm of my climax inside him.

I rolled him on to his back and entered him again. He was still tight, and my body shook slightly with the effort. The gun was between our hips, though held securely in my hand. As I thrust, he groaned. I traced the bunching muscles of his lower belly, dragged the length of the barrel along the inside of his left thigh, nudging his crinkling balls to one side then the other. There were more freckles on his legs, like a spotting of summer sand.

He laughed again, though breathlessly. “Do it, man! No bullets, right?”

I met his eyes and gave no answer.

Realisation—or sobriety—caught up with him suddenly. Christ, he wept like a baby! He begged, he raged at me; he couldn’t seem to make coherent sentences. No more laughs; no jokes. He had found the worst appendix to his ‘book of life’. I looked down on his streaked cheeks and the pool of grubby, childish tears in the hollow of his throat, and the trigger slipped like a familiar friend against my finger.

Step five was as wrong as many others had been.

Step six. What I’d always been leading up to. I had high hopes; certain aspirations.

It had been a long, tiring time. The effort seemed disproportionate; the rewards far from rich. But by that time, the game played itself. There were occasions I wondered whether I was the commander, or was commanded.

I was driven by it.

At first, Zander was nothing but a shadow in the arcade, blending into the alleys between the deserted shops, turning a hooded back to the passing spotlights of cars. I wasn’t sure I should be back here; this world was unpredictable, with its population of strange and distorted characters. It was attractive, too, though.

He bumped against me, but I didn’t fear a mugging. It was my attention he wanted. Sharp, rat-like eyes stared at me; surprisingly white teeth populated his grin.

“I need more than a tenner,” he said, with no ceremony.

We were back to the money, of course, and he negotiated like a merchant banker. It was foreplay of its own. He followed me as if he could have led the way—if he’d chosen to.

Had I lost concentration? I didn’t think so. I enjoyed it all, for once. I followed the steps and he trod them along with me. My senses were filled with it, thrilled with it. His thin body folded around the gun as it caressed him—his responses to me were fast and sharp and instinctively satisfying. His expression taunted me, every time my fingers stroked along the metal, and his grin encouraged me. When I talked through the steps, his whisper echoed me.

“It’s good,” he said, more than once. “It’s fucking good.” There was a strange lack of vehemence in his swearing. He was announcing, not denouncing.

He had the body of a wasted child, but the worldly awareness of a much older man than I, and his strength was surprising. It was the drugs, I assumed. There were marks on his arms and legs, in between the striking tattoos, and I caught the occasional flicker of bestiality behind his pale, still eyes. He didn’t confront me with it, and I had no interest myself, so the details remained unknown. He didn’t see himself as a victim.

Zander was totally uninhibited. He saw no reason for any kind of embarrassment or mutual moderation. It was both refreshing and astonishing. The gun joined us in our play, in our sex. He accepted it as he did my bindings, my hands, my cock. His body bent and flexed, thin and lithe and bony, and shining with sweat.

I liked his unequivocal arrogance, his physical freedom; the way he stretched, allowing his chest to expand and his cock to bob up between his slim hips. I liked to hear the occasional snap of a stiff joint; to watch the way his tattoos followed the lines of his muscle, accentuating them. He was careless of his erection; he didn’t seem to want to climax quickly, though he looked swollen and needy from the start.

By step four, I was more aroused than I’d ever been. I was embedded in him; I could feel every muscle of his body tense on my flesh, my climax coming fiercely from a deep pit inside me. He pulled himself up to his knees, clutching at his own cock, a slim, long shaft, pierced with a ring of astonishing size and brightness, pumping at it as I moved in and out of his ass, rearing up behind him.

“Good…” he sighed. “It’s comin’ soon.”

I rolled him to his back, and spread his legs, sinking back into him while I was still hard enough. He kept a hand on his cock, and I assumed he must be close to coming by now. I pressed the gun to his hip, but then I felt his free hand on top of mine, adding its pressure. When I squeezed the trigger, he laughed softly. His eyes glazed momentarily; he licked at suddenly dry lips. He didn’t remove his grip from mine. I had passed step five.

Then the control suddenly slipped from me, like mercury through grasping fingers.

I watched him begin to tease the top of his cock in earnest; his breath started to speed up, sounding harsh and shallow. The other hand grasped my wrist, tighter than ever, and it began to push my arm—and the gun—back up his body.

“Stop that,” I said.

He grinned. “Step six,” he said, slyly. He grunted slightly, and slowed the pace on his cock. But he kept up the pressure on my wrist, tugging me upwards. The gun slid along his sweat-soaked skin, over the bumps of his thin ribs, around his tensed shoulder and up to his cheek.

“The steps are for me to say,” I said. My voice had a timbre to it that I disliked.

His head went back and his eyes were half closed. He was panting now. “I’m close,” he said. “Let me have it.” I was reminded of his surprising strength, for I couldn’t move my hand away. He gripped me, and I gripped the gun, and its muzzle was nestling into the shallow hollow of his temple.

He held it to his own head—I had little control of it. He bent a bony finger on top of mine, and together we braced them against the trigger. He bit at his lip, drawing a small circle of dark red blood, which he licked away quickly. The hand on his cock tightened visibly, and he groaned as the thick head swelled up and viscous seed started to spit out of the slit. His body shuddered, the limbs forcing him up off the mattress. He cried out once—softly—and I was unable to stop his other hand controlling mine, his jagged nails biting into the skin of my palm, forcing down my trigger finger at his behest.

His neck bent sideways, his head submitting to the pressure of the cold immutable barrel.

The sound of step six was a snap of shock, a grunt of aggression, a click of cruel conclusion.

He left soon after.

He left soon after.

Of course, they all do that. I’m still waiting for the one who counts along with me, but who concedes my control; the one who twists underneath me and cries out for the delicious tension of it, whilst provoking my own satisfaction. The one who plays by my rules, but matches my intelligence—who actually asks to see the bullet, who questions whether it exists at all.

If it does, I wouldn’t waste it on the boys; on the pawns in my game. Not even on that one who would travel through every step with me and laugh with appreciation at the ridiculous melodrama. The one who’s not drugged, or masochistic, or apathetic, or earnest, or terrified. The one who’s truly—not manically - fearless.

The one who fucks me back.

No, the bullet—if it exists - is for me. For when the tedium grows too much to bear; when the major pieces come into play, and yet I’m still struggling to enjoy them. I play by my own rules, didn’t I say so? I just forget what they are now and then.

The main attraction isn’t the sex. Christ, no. I can get that anywhere. It’s the reaction—the sudden flicker in their eyes; the tension in the thighs; the way they lick at their cracked lips. The sex will cease to stimulate me soon—the physical fascination between the players will cease to be sufficient for me. I will be left with only the erotic, emotional reaction to entice me.

I place the pen down on the desk and stretch my cramped fingers. The pages of my notebook are full of smooth, elegant script. Occasional lines are underscored for emphasis; some have been scratched out. My eyes follow the flow of detail with a concentrated fervour.

After all, it’s only a game, isn’t it?

 

© 2005 Reven Maxwell - Contributor's Bio