Intimates would ask Cody why he would risk his reputation and safety doing the underground S/M scene every weekend. Cody would claim that it was a backlash on the tyranny of the business suit and tie he was forced to wear every day of the week.

Of course Cody's claim was as lame as any excuse. The truth was that Cody was feeling a tad frustrated by Cameron's preoccupation with work, not to mention Cameron's thinning interest in having _s_e_x_ with him. On the other hand, Cody hadn't stopped loving Cameron despite the change in Cameron's outlook. Cody was completely absorbed in Cameron.

All this had nothing to do with gratitude either. Certainly Cody was grateful for the break in life that the Macfarlanes had given him, promoting him to Assistant Manager of the milk company from the ranks of delivery boy in a span of four years. But to accuse him of staying with Cameron, the boss's son and heir apparent, out of sheer gratitude was to cheapen everything that love stood for Cody. To Cody, betraying Cameron in any way was a betrayal of himself.

Hard to believe from Cameron's behavior, but Cameron was besotted with Cody, too. Cameron once told Cody that he'd sooner part with all the family's treasures than leave Cody. It wasn't unusual for Cody to be awoken in mid-slumber by a fearful Cameron pleading and making Cody promise repeatedly that he, Cody, would never leave him.

Cameron wasn't proud of his insecurity. Cameron Macfarlane, in polite euphemism, for we have evolved as a generation of inoffensive euphemisms, was a person with AIDS. It was an inconvenience he had contracted from his reckless wining, partying and promiscuous days before he met Cody. So of course he always felt insecure in his relationships. And his malaise was the reason he stopped having _s_e_x_ual intercourse: fear of contaminating Cody.

Cody was, in contrast, indifferent to the sickness. It wasn't that he was callous. He was simply unafraid. AIDS, like the cold, was a virological commonplace, and Cody couldn't care more if Cameron was born with feminine breasts. For Dakota Youngblood was part Sioux Indian, part Chinese, who believed that a person's life and the misnomer of the element of free choice were bound in the kismet forces that could not be altered.

Nothing had changed as far as Cody was concerned. He had known of Cameron's past, that was as checkered as a harlequin's pants, before they got together, and he had willingly accepted the risk. He was now just as ready for _s_e_x_ with Cameron as at the beginning of their romance. After all, Cody was twenty-three years old, and experts would say this was a male's _s_e_x_ual prime.

The trouble was, Cameron could never live with himself if he knew he had passed on the sickness to Cody and by implication, murdered Cody. And besides, the sickness made him very tired, too tired to keep up with Cody's demanding BD/SM proclivities. Even lifting up a paddle tired him out.

Cody was too darling a boy to register long recitals of complaints to Cameron or deprecate their monogamous love with a small infringement such as a serial one-night stand on weekends. Cameron would have understood if he did, but Cody could never live with the guilt of grieving Cameron.

However, Cody would confer upon himself the luxury of socializing on his own. In fact, it was Cameron who encouraged it. But one night, Cody came home to find Cameron waiting up in bed and in tears. Cameron admitted he had thought he could handle it, but he had underestimated his feelings for Cody.

After the shock of this discovery, Cody stayed home every night until it was Cameron who began to be encumbered by guilt.

"Go out, Cody," Cameron said while Cody was wrapping him up in the comforter. It wasn't good. Cameron's white T-cell count was low again. "You need to be with people your age."

Cody shook his head. "No, old man," he said, "I won't leave you alone."

Of course Cameron was not old. Thirty-nine years of age last November, which was a month ago, Cameron nevertheless looked younger. But the sickness had lately taken its toll on him to age him by a hundred years. He certainly felt that old.

"No, Cody," Cameron scolded, "I mean it. Go out. Forget what you saw the last time. I was being self-pitying and selfish. You deserve to give yourself some fun. You work hard all week. And you have needs. I want you to have nice memories."

Neither had wanted it, but a quarrel ensued till finally, confused, Cody changed into his jeans and leather bomber jacket and headed where the lights took him. Cody did the boulevard for hours before he ended up at a swanky S/M club. This was where he met Jeremy. This was where he was propositioned to work part time for Jeremy.

Jeremy Kincaid owned a mail order BDSM service. His clients were professionals and executives whose public and private lives were in two separate poles. These men's private life was otherwise submerged by a pretentious public front, where their wives did charity for the underprivileged and their children went to private schools and were scouts and cubs.

Now, what was attractive to Cody about Jeremy's de jure enterprise was that he could pick his own clients, the ones that did not demand for penile intercourse. This allowed Cody to settle his altercation unfettered by obligations of intimacy and romantic interest or by fear of infidelity. Fortunately, most of Jeremy's clients only wanted someone to live out their fantasies with: someone they could tie up and spank senseless, for instance.

Cody consulted with Cameron about moonlighting but Cameron felt he would need to investigate the legitimacy of Jeremy's enterprise before he gave his consent. One could never be too careful for there were many loonies out there, Cameron had told Cody.

It took Cameron but a week to know all he needed to know. At the end of his week's meetings with Jeremy, Cameron gave Cody his blessings.

It was on Jeremy's persuasion that Cody accepted a certain Mr. Liam Murray's contract. Jeremy was assuring Cody that Mr. Murray would be the perfect gentleman in his dealings, but during the play itself, he took things extremely seriously. "So expect to work hard for your pocket money," Jeremy advised Cody.

"He wants you to arrive in just your underwear, a white brief, to be precise," Jeremy continued.

Cody stripped off his clothes till he was in just his jocks. This he also removed while Jeremy handed him a pair of substitute briefs. It was important that the clients' wishes were followed to the minutest detail. Jeremy's ethos was, a job that had been contracted must be delivered to specifications, for otherwise the client needn't pay.

Aided along by Jeremy, Cody was squeezed into a metal cage. Cody had to curl up into a ball to ease himself into the 3.5 by 5.5 feet cell and afterward, his hands and feet were bound with leather straps that were then looped around the bars. Cody was ready to be delivered to the doorstep of his first customer, Mr. Murray.

Jeremy and two co-workers then lifted up the cage, rocking Cody about a little, and transferred it to the back of a company van.

Cody's feelings were an anastomosis of fear and excitement. All he remembered of his trip to his client's abode was that it was fairly long.

He also remembered eventually looking up into a bearded man's countenance when the box that encased the cage was at long last removed. The face had been solemn, far removed from what he had imagined a Mr. Murray, a computer engineer with three daughters, to look like.

"You will call me 'sir' at all times," Murray immediately informed a squinting Cody, "except when I permit otherwise, and only then may you call me Liam. Is this clear, boy?"

Cody's vision cleared to find that Murray really looked quite decent, in fact, even good looking, behind all that facial hair. "Yes, sir," Cody answered, feeling relieved, "very clear, sir."

Without releasing Cody of his bonds, Murray dug his hand into Cody's underwear, felt his still flaccid penis, and found the key resting on his thicket of pubic hair. He gripped the key and removed it. It fitted the lock on the cage, as it should. The key turned and clicked and then the door was opened.

Squatting before Cody, Mr. Murray cut through the leather restraints with a pocket knife.

"Okay, boy," he commanded Cody, "come out of there."

Cody had had to be helped squeeze into the cage, and so he was finding some difficulty now getting out without Mr. Murray's assistance.

"Sir," he whispered timidly, looking up at his master who had cranked up to his full 6 feet 3 frame, a good half a foot taller than Cody.

"C'mon, boy," Murray taunted, "you can crawl out, can't you?"

Something about Murray's mocking condescension excited Cody. Cody had always found submitting to a willful man like Mr. Murray, or like Cameron, easy.

Cody stretched his legs out and then wiggled on his haunches and palms till he had successfully freed himself of his coop. He next heard the command to stand up.

Cody stood up with some difficulty. He never realized how stiff his knees had become from riding in the constricting proximity of the pigpen. Steadying himself at last on tanned legs, Cody stood up with his feet slightly spread and his fists over his crotch.

He suddenly felt a smack issued to his fists. "Never cover yourself, boy," Murray scolded. "You will not be ashamed of your body around me."

"Yes, sir," Cody whispered, dropping his arms to his sides while his hands throbbed.

"I can't hear you, boy," Murray said.

"Yes, sir," Cody repeated, much louder.

Mr. Murray now put himself through the mechanics of sizing up his new slave. He paced the spatial dimensions of the room around Cody, nodding his head now and again when he seemed to approve of what he was seeing. He seemed particularly pleased with the bottom cheeks tightly enclosed in Cody's underwear but clearly outlined by the thin cotton of the briefs. By now having felt immensely turned on from being scrutinized this way while in his semi-nude state, Cody was wearing a massive bulge on his crotch.

"Remove your underwear," Mr. Murray commanded Cody now. "Leave it around your knees."

Cody obeyed and then placed himself at his master's disposal.

Liam Murray gripped his new boy by his testicles and had him conveyed into another room. Cody's eyes were cast on a pair of hand restraints that hung from two long chains nailed to the low ceiling. This was where Cody found himself in bondage for about an hour after Murray had blindfolded him, removed his briefs completely and then left him alone.

Suspenseful excitement raced through Cody's blood from the prolongation of the sport of hanging from the steel cuffs. He could not see himself or his environ, but he certainly felt his penis stirring wildly. He occupied his mind guessing how long he must be. He thought he had to have reached his full seven inches.

Suddenly noises pervaded the room outside him. He grew frantic with anticipation that Mr. Murray could be entertaining this evening. The door opened at last and he heard footsteps approach him where he was dangling three inches from the floor.

"Did I give you permission to harden?" Mr. Murray asked, slapping his hand against Cody's exposed tool.

That hurt awfully but Cody found he was hardly humiliated. He was just a little embarrassed because now there was somebody else in the same room. He couldn't see the person but it aroused him immensely to be analyzed naked and facing possible impending punishment from, not just one but two men.

"What do you think, Jonathan?" Murray asked. "You think thirty smacks of the paddle should teach a boy some self-control over his _c_o_c_k_?"

"Yeah," came the stifled reply, as if the person had had his mouth covered to camouflage what he truly sounded like, "that should do nicely."

A hard smack landed on Cody's bottom all of a sudden, even before Cody had had the time to let the meaning of the men's conversation kick in.

Cody hollered. That seemed to be the wrong reaction for another smack was administered to his bottom. From thereon Cody never again found time to catch his breath for smack after smack of his new master's paddle landed on his backside until he had been given the promised thirty.

The best was about to come. As soon as the spanking ceased, Cody felt something large and long forcibly thrust up his anus. Cody shrieked from the delight of the surprised move and then unable to control himself, shot out three strings of his semen into the air, grunting as he did. Someone else seemed to be having the same reaction for Cody heard another masculine grunt that was the malese elation at ejaculating. And rather extraordinarily and unexpectedly, Cody's flank was pressed against a neck and then his navel was lightly kissed.

The _d_i_l_d_o_ roughly removed from his hole, Cody felt himself being released. The blindfold was also removed. Cody looked around him but there were only himself and Mr. Murray. Jonathan appeared to have vanished from the anechoic room. And strangely, so had the paddle that had been used to spank him. Cody retreated into his mind, disappointed and wondering.

Murray read him impeccably. "The gentleman Jonathan? You don't need to know who he is, or meet him," Mr. Murray said, "but he's someone you'll have to get used to being here. You did wonderfully. He's very satisfied with what you've been able to deliver. He'd like you to be our exclusive slave. Will you?"

Cody nodded nervously, promising that he would accept no other client from hereon, and was then given clothes to wear.

Mr. Murray stuffed a huge stack of bills into Cody's jacket pocket as soon as Cody was dressed. "Your employer will be well rewarded," he told Cody. "The check's in the mail already. But this is your tip. It's from Jonathan. He'll be expecting you again next week."

A taxi was already waiting outside. Cody slumped into the back seat and, still bewildered by the mysterious Jonathan, reached into his jacket pocket to pull out his first night's tip. He counted two thousand dollars. "Too much," Cody sighed, returning the money into his pocket and sitting back to rehearse what he was going to say to Cameron when he got home.

Cameron had just managed to change out of his resort clothes and crawl into bed when Cody got in.

"You okay?" Cameron asked Cody, pulling the comforter over himself. "How did it go?"

Cody studied his beloved for contents of heart and mind. He shrugged. "So-so," he said, "but the client seemed very satisfied."

Cody handed Cameron the cash.

"This should go into your trust," Cameron suggested, counting the money. "As well as the rest you'll be making subsequent weekends."

Cody smiled and turned to the bathroom. He didn't want to say anymore. It was pointless to make Cameron feel worse than he probably already did with an honest appraisal of how his first weekend job, of many to come, had gone for him. It had been great but Cameron didn't have to know that.

"We'll go to the bank tomorrow, okay?" Cameron called out after Cody.

Cameron fell back exhausted. But he was feeling very good. His plan had worked. Cody was getting what he needed and there was the added bonus of the trust. It would set up Cody comfortably in his life long after he, Cameron, was gone.

Suddenly remembering, Cameron reached behind his pillow to retrieve the paddle, which only moments ago he had watched his pal, Liam, use to spank Cody's backside. Cameron kissed the wood lightly and then stealthily replaced it under the bed.

(Copyright, JRK, December, '99.)