Only One Draw

[This Hardesty 7 mystery is completed and will post in eight chapters by mid May 2024.]

 The first charcoal drawing the artist Griffin Gould made of the fully converted T-girl prostitute, Destiny, in the third-floor, high-ceilinged studio of his Dupont Circle brownstone mansion, was in the nude. The sheets on the bed were tousled, and Destiny lay on them in a languid, post-coital pose that had not yet happened. Her reconstructed genitals, the folded slit, with the tiny reduced penis at the top, were prominently displayed. A silken slip lay beside her, the hem brushing her thigh. This was not Destiny’s first session with the artist. It was the second, and Gould did two drawings this time as he had done before.

The model had been eager to pose for the artist the first time, having been recommended to Gould by his agent, who had engaged Destiny’s services and been pleased. He had also told Destiny of Gould’s reputation, interest in trans girls, and methodology. Destiny had found this intriguing.

But Destiny had found the first time more taxing sexually than she had thought it would be, so she wasn’t as eager to take the assignment for a second time when it had come her way. He had to pay her more above the escort agency fee than he did the first time to make it happen. Gould was a rough and demanding dominator, making the sex that came after the posing more memorable than the modeling. Gould had had to contact Destiny separately and offer her something recreational as well as money for Destiny to agree. Her escort agency gave the prostitutes final say on whether they’d take an assignment, and they turned their eyes away on any inducements or extra-generous tips that were involved. They did express concern, though, if the escort wound up in the hospital and not available for assignments for any length of time.

Nude drawings were not Gould’s publicly known specialty, although he did them very well and they were very much in demand among select collectors. The artworks strewn around his studio weren’t charcoal nudes. Those hung in another room on the same floor, a studio set up for sex as much as this one. Gould kept one artwork of every two he did of a model, and many of those were displayed in the other room. What could be seen in this room were the luminous, detailed cityscape oils that he was most noted for, many of which were set in the Washington, D.C., area.

Gould, in his early forties, both self-confident and self-possessed, ginger haired, fit, and hirsute, with a close-cropped beard on a model-handsome face, was perched on a stool facing the foot of the bed, the wall behind him being all mirror, and worked quickly in the drawing. He was wearing athletic shorts and nothing else. He knew he was a sexy man and he flaunted it.

The session would include a fuck. Gould had paid well for the beautifully androgynous T-girl’s time and body.

The first drawing done, Gould picked a small bundle off a nearby table and walked it over to Destiny at the bed.

“Oh, baby, you remembered,” the T-girl cooed, taking it up, unwrapping the heroin fix supplies and starting to prepare it. The promise of this was all that had induced her to come back for a second sitting. Gould could be brutal in sex.

“It was part of the deal. This is just a taste of it, though. I wish you didn’t use this shit, and I don’t want your mind to go off wandering for the second drawing,” Gould responded. As Destiny shot up in the hollow of one of her knees, Gould went over to the table and snorted up the two lines of cocaine he’d lined out for himself on a piece of parchment.

After they were both done, the artist directed Destiny to put the slip on and kneel on the bed, facing him. The artist walked over to adjust the model into the pose he wanted, but when he reached the bed, he first leaned down and ran his hands through the long, platinum-blond tresses on the T-girl’s head to cup the prostitute’s head and pulled her into a kiss. The other hand went under the hem of the slip and up to glide over the slim body and fondle the pert little breasts the surgeons had given Destiny. Then, while still in the kiss, the hand glided down to the T-girl’s sex, fondling and exploring there. After testing the reconditioned vaginal channel for opening and depth with long, elegant fingers while the T-girl writhed and groaned in his grasp, his fingers went to the vestigial penis, rubbing and toying with it as Destiny panted and rocked against the roaming hand.

Destiny gasped and squirmed—and then, aided by the effect of the drug she’d shot up, moaned deeply—as Gould increased the taxing of the surgically created vagina by pressing his hand in even further and then, as Destiny sobbed, breaching to the wrist and fisting the T-girl for a few moments before saying, “Well, shit,” and extracting his hand. “Who would have thought they would have built it to take that much stretch?”

Destiny moaned low in her chest and then gasped and groaned as Gould went down on his knees on the floor at the foot of the bed, wrapped his arms around Destiny’s waist, and attacked the model’s sex with his lips and tongue.

Destiny panted and rocked on the artist’s searching tongue. “Oh, baby, baby,” she murmured through ruby-red lips.

“There. That is the look I want on your face,” Gould said, as he rose and adjusted the silk slip as he wanted it. One strap was pulled off the model’s shoulder and that side of the slip dropped to show Destiny’s pert left breast. “Left hand touching your belly please, and your right in the hair at the back of your head and lifting it onto the top of your head. Your face in that ‘I’m being sucked off good’ expression, please. Yes, good.”

The artist went back to his stool and worked feverishly with the charcoals.

Done with the drawing, he stood, slipped off his shorts to reveal a proud, upturned, erection rooted in a trimmed ginger bush.

“Oh, baby, is that all for me?” Destiny whispered coquettishly in a low, husky voice. Her observation wasn’t just proforma. He’d rank in the upper 10 percent of all of the cocks she’d taken in her job.

Gould didn’t answer. He just smiled, walked back to the bed, cupped the back of Destiny’s head again, running his fingers into the long platinum hair, and pulled her face down to his crotch. Destiny took the artist’s cock in her mouth and gave him head, smearing red lipstick on the sides of the throbbing cock.

After a few minutes, Gould, in full erection, pulled out and climbed up on the bed, moving behind the kneeling T-girl. He closely covered Destiny from behind, kneeling as the model was doing. He drew Destiny’s legs behind his hips on either side. Reaching down, he lifted the T-girl’s pelvis and put his upcurved erection in place. Destiny gasped and groaned as Gould’s cock penetrated and the T-girl’s cunt channel sank on the shaft.

“Oh, baby! Fuck! Shit! You’re huge. Be good to me, Daddy!”

The artist’s left hand cupped Destiny’s chin, holding her head back into his curly haired matted chest. The right hand went under the hem of the slip, lifting it up to show in the mirror across the room Destiny’s surgically provided snatch with the root of Gould’s shaft buried in it. He barked the “Camera” instruction programmed into the cameras trained on the frame the mirror reflected, and shots of Gould fucking Destiny were clicked off to be used as guides for later charcoal drawings. The artist palmed Destiny’s belly and lifted and lowered the smaller T-girl’s body on the shaft in a languid fuck that increased in speed as Destiny moaned and panted and Gould watched the fuck in the mirror. *Click*, *click*, *click* went the responses to the repeated “Camera” command.

“Fuck yourself on the shaft,” Gould growled, stopping the thrusting of his pelvis, and the prostitute dutifully took over, using the leverage of her knees pressed into the mattress beside Gould’s to rise and fall on the cock. Both of them were staring into the mirror, watching the inches of thick cock lengthen and shorten in Destiny’s miracle snatch.

“Camera!” *click*. “Camera” *click*.

Destiny was built, the surgeon knowing she was a prostitute, to take the big boys, and Gould was a big boy indeed. Destiny was also built with sensitivity both in the vestigial penis at the top of her slit and the relocation of the original glans at the base of the new vagina. Thus, there was friction at both points when Gould’s glans reached Destiny’s and the two rubbed together. The artist growled deep in his throat and Destiny sobbed in ecstasy as they both steamed toward orgasm.

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, yes! Seed me! Breed me!” Destiny cried out and exploded, as Gould tensed and jerked, shot his load—“Camera!” *click*—tensed and jerked—“Camera!” *click*—and shot another one—“Camera!” *click*.

Destiny’s body relaxed and collapsed back into the man’s chest in a whisper of “Oh, baby, baby,” as Gould’s cum dribble around his still-buried cock and onto the sheets. Gould released her, and the T-girl slowly fell forward at the foot of the bed into a heap on the floor.

“Camera” *click*.

The artist stepped over her and walked back to where he’d left his art supplies.

Destiny lay there, trembling and whimpering to herself. The supplies back in order and having recovered his erection, Gould walked back to the bed, pulled the prostitute off the floor by her long, platinum hair, and laid her on the edge of the bed on her back. He grasped her ankles and spread and raised her shapely legs in a V. The hem of the silk slip rode up onto her belly, putting her reconstructed sex on display again. Gould nestled in between her spread thighs, rested the head of his cock at the entrance of her cum-slicked slit ever so briefly, moving the cap of the shaft on her folds and on her little penis, rubbing and teasing them, and then, as Destiny gave out a little cry and reached for the man’s pecs with her long fingernails, Gould thrust in and up, and fucked her again.

A rustle at the door revealed that someone had been there, observing them, silently, before withdrawing.

At the dressing table later, Destiny was reapplying cosmetics, lightly, as when she was walking in public, it was hard for others to immediately tell whether the T-girl was a he or a her, which resulted in precisely the attention Destiny wanted. She was in a bra and silk panties, which is what she’d wear under the androgynous look of designer jeans, sequined sneakers, a billowy cotton shirt and a tailored jacket.

Griffin Gould was working on a cityscape canvas in oils over by the nearly wall-sized window at the back of the house that permitted natural light to flood into the studio.

“Will you want me again?” Destiny asked, looking down at the wad of cash he’d dropped on the dressing table where she was working on her own form of artwork.

“Probably,” was all he said. His mind now, however, was focused on getting the light, being applied to the paper on the drawing board, just right as well as on the business meeting that had been going on down in his first-floor study while he was drawing and fucking Destiny.

“And I’ll see you tonight at the art exhibition?” Destiny asked.

“Yes, if you don’t forget. Don’t take any more of that shit today. You’ve stood me up before.”

“I won’t. But then afterward? You paid for the night. Maybe after I can have—”

“Yes, I’ve planned for you for the night. And, if I’m in the mood and you’ve been a good girl at the exhibition, there will be some more candy.”

“And you’ll be good to me? You’ll put it in my pussy again?” Destiny reached down, ran fingers under the leg opening to her panties, and worked her recently acquired folds with her long, scarlet-painted fingernails. Her sex play enticed Gould away from his work and he came up close behind her at the dressing table.

“Yes, I’ll fuck your snatch into tomorrow.” He leaned over her, reached down, brushed Destiny’s hand away, slid the panties off her legs, and worked the T-girl’s slit, as Destiny leaned back in her chair, splayed her legs, and moaned her pleasure. She reached around, unzipping the artist’s shorts; pulled his cock out, giving a little squeal of pleasure in find he was in erection; and stroked him as he let his fingers play in her folds.

With a little groan, Gould turned her around in her chair. He lifted a leg over Destiny’s legs, facing her; positioned his cock head at her slit; and thrust up. She gasped and began to pant, as he reached around, gripped the long, platinum blonde hair at the back of her head, arching her head back, and buried his face in the hollow of her neck. She flinched when he bit her there. Destiny dug her long, scarlet fingernails into the man’s shoulder blades as he fucked her in long, deep slides.

Downstairs, Gould’s assistant and bedwarmer, Luigi Fellini, appeared at the study door and informed Gould’s business agent, Sam Shaffer, and the Dupont Circle art gallery owner, Corwin Case, that Gould would be with them momentarily to sign whatever they had agreed on. Gould had been in his studio the whole time the two had been discussing his business. They both knew what he’d been doing there. Neither cared that or why he had been making them wait, their time in the study far less than their business required, as Gould’s sex-laced charcoal drawings of male nudes represented more money in the bank for each of them than his more famous cityscape landscape oils did. They hadn’t been trapped in the study. Both men worked closely with Gould and had the run of the mansion. He had a lot of artwork and kept it rotating on the walls, so both Shaffer and Case had taken extensive breaks in their talks to roam around and seek out and appraise new art.

As the three men stood at the door to the study in anticipation of Gould’s appearance, Destiny tripped down the stairs into the foyer, turned a saucy smile on the men, and strutted out the front door. Each of the men enveloped her disappearing figure in an assessing look. Fellini went as far as to follow her to the door and watch her get into a Capitol Cab Company taxi, with a big black bruiser at the wheel.

* * * *

“What do you think? Do you have a trained eye?”

“It’s trained for some purposes,” Toby Drake said, turning to look at the distinguish, in-command-looking man who had saddled up beside him in front of a line of cityscape oil paintings at the Artechouse exhibit hall on D Street, near the D.C. end of the 14th Street bridge. The assessing look Drake gave the man easily conveyed that the young man had put a trained eye to the older, tall, and trim man, appearing to be in his forties, with the wavy ginger hair and Van Dyke mustache. He assessed the man both as a dominant and a player. The man put a hand on the small of Drake’s back, indicating he had a trained eye for young men—and the particular type of young man Drake represented—himself. Drake confirmed both of their assessments by letting the hand remain there. “Alas, it’s not trained all that well for art,” he added. “I can appreciate innovation, though.”

“And you find these paintings innovative?”

“Yes,” Drake, a high-end male prostitute, small and slender, twenty-five-years-old, looking five years younger, Minnesotan blond—almost platinum blond, his hair falling to his shoulders when he let it down—answered. Tonight he had his hair in a tight bun at the back of his head so that its length was hardly noticeable at all and he was conservatively, if elegantly, dressed all in black—tailored trousers and a pleated shiny black silk shirt, with long, loose sleeves and big, round, silver cufflinks that someone in the know of the gay lifestyle could see were of a stylized design of two interlinked male sex symbols. The front of the shirt opened enough to be both provocative and sexy.

Both Drake’s movie-star, nearly platinum, blond looks and the cufflinks set against the blackness of his attire drew attention to the jewelry. The man had looked there—and perhaps understanding the gay symbolism of the cufflink design made the man comfortable enough to palm the young man’s lower back. He also observed that Drake’s fingernails were painted silver. Everything spoke of a young man progressing toward trans and made the man wonder how far Drake had gone on the road. It, of course, piqued his interest.

“At first I couldn’t understand why an exhibit of landscape oils was opening at the Artechouse this evening,” Drake continued. “This gallery is dedicated to the marrying of art and technology, but now I understand. Very clever. You look at these paintings face on and you see the cityscape in the daylight. But, when you look at them on the slant, like those over there, you see a nightscape with luminous lighting. I have no idea how the artist does that, but obvious technology is involved for the paintings to be on display here.”

“You do seem to have a trained eye for art,” the man said, “and looks can certainly be deceiving. What looks like one thing on the outside might be hiding something entirely different underneath.” Again he wondered if this handsome young man was more woman under his stylish clothing. If so, he was very interested.

The man’s hand drifting a bit lower on Drake’s waist to the top of the curve of his buttocks. Again, Drake didn’t move away. He looked at all men as possible clients and he didn’t move away from those who he found attractive or intriguing. He felt both about this man, and Drake had no aversion to men older than he was. Indeed, this one looked to be in his forties, and Drake was here for a client in his fifties—but still a virile and vigorous fifty-four. This wasn’t Drake’s first escort date with the man he was meeting here.

“You picked up on the artists’ technique with these paintings,” the man continued, leaning in close to Drake. “Not everyone attending this showing tonight will do so, unless someone points it out to them. Are you an artist as well?”

“No, I’m not an artist,” Drake said with a little laugh. “I remain on the other end of the brush at all times.”

“Ah, then, an artist’s model, perhaps. I would believe it. You are a beautiful young man.”

“I’ve done some modeling, yes.”

“Including nudes?”

“Upon occasion,” Drake answered, giving the man a saucy little smile.

“Excellent. I do drawings of nudes. Perhaps some day—”

“I don’t come cheaply,” Drake answered.

“I didn’t think you would. But I do think you come for a man—for a man who knows how and where to touch—and with what. Am I wrong in that thought?” They both knew the man had his hand possessively virtually on Drake’s buttocks and he hadn’t been rebuffed.

“I don’t try to hide it,” Drake said, “for a man who can afford me.”

“If I am interested, is there some way I can contact you?”

Drake dug out a business card and handed it to the man.

“Ah, an escort agency. Very high end.”

“You know of this agency?” Drake asked.

“Very well. You could say intimately.”

“I can be hired for many purposes,” Drake said. “Since it’s what we’re discussing, though, I’ll just say that I do modeling. I know how to pose for an artist.”

“And if the artist wants you to lie down for him as well?”

“As I said, it’s all a matter of being able to afford it.”

“Perhaps, then, we might discuss what other purposes you may be hired for from this agency.”

“If you wish.”

The man laughed and changed tack. “You seem to be here alone,” he said, as he tucked the card away. “I know that young men in your business have other pursuits as well. Are you, by any chance, an art critic from one of the papers? Which one?”

“No,” Drake laughed. “I’m meeting up with someone here. My date works with the artist.”

“Perhaps I know your date. What’s her name?”

“His name. My date is a man. But I highly suspect you knew that.”

The laugh again. “Ah, yes, of course. I was just teasing. I think we have already established that I would like to fuck you and that I could for a price.” The hand dropped onto Drake’s butt cheek, and he flexed, squeezing slightly and releasing. Squeezing and releasing. They already were having sex.

Toby Drake’s breath became a bit ragged. The man not only looked a hunk, but he also was smooth and had an arousing, straightforward sex approach. That was refreshing in Drake’s business. There was no question that he was interested in Drake and the young whore wasn’t put off by the man saying straight out that he wanted to fuck Drake. Drake wanted to fuck him too. He was the most attractive prospect in the room. His approach was so smooth that Drake entertained visions of lying on his back on the leather bench between where they were standing and the paintings on the wall, opening his legs to the man, while the man hovered over him and penetrated. Drake had no doubt that the man would be good at it.

If the man, whoever he was, could afford the price.

Both of those questions were answered when the man Drake had been waiting for, Corwin Case, the owner of the Farragut Art Gallery, at Farragut Square and Connecticut Avenue Northwest, a primary dealer in the art work of Griffin Gould, the featured landscape artist at this Artechouse exhibition, saddled up to Drake and the man.

“Ah, Griffin, I see you’ve already met my young friend, Toby Drake.”

Gould’s hand came off Toby Drake’s butt and he turned a smile to the art gallery owner. “Yes, we were just discussing the sensuousness of art and the high price that good art goes for, Corwin. I think our exhibit here is going quite well. I already see red dots on a few of the painting. Money in the bank for both of us. I can afford to pursue other pleasures of mine now.”

Gould was the artist for this exhibit, but Case was paying for the evening and any paintings sold were being handled through the Farragut Art Gallery, with Case taking a hefty commission.

The three chatted for a few minutes, with Case pointedly putting an arm around Drake to establish his territory. Drake was there on Case’s credit card and both Gould and Drake got the message. Neither of them mentioned that Gould also did male nudes, that it had been established that Drake could be hired to model, or that both Gould and Drake now knew, without anything explicitly being said, that the two would meet again and fuck—if Gould wanted to budget for that.

Toby Drake hadn’t been the least surprised that the man who saddled up to talk to him about the paintings and to signal sexual interest was the artist for the exhibit, Griffin Gould. Toby had been disingenuous about indicating he had little knowledge of art. He kept track of the local art scene. He knew what artist was being featured in this exhibit—and he’d seen Gould’s photo.

What did surprise him was to learn that the man did male nudes as well. That was a far departure from innovative cityscape oils and hadn’t been mentioned in anything Toby had read. He was equally surprised—but happy and intrigued—that the man was a gay top and was forward about it. He was a hunk and had a sexy approach to it. From the prices attached to his paintings, Drake also knew that the man should be rich, which was always a good thing for a rent-boy to know about his client prospects.

The three hadn’t chatted for long before a nervous-looking young, foxy-looking dark-haired and complexioned young man approached them and addressed himself to Gould.

“The Sinclairs have latched on to one of the larger ones in the other room and may need just a little shove to red dot it, Griffin. Maybe you should—”

“Well, all right,” Gould said, a bit of irritation showing in his voice. “I’d best go to them.” He turned to Drake and said, much to the dismay of the foxy young man, as was apparent in his face, “I’ll be in touch.” That was accentuated by Gould touching Drake’s arm with those long, slender, artistic fingers of his. And then to Case, “You know I hate the sales angle to all of this.”

When they were gone, Drake turned to Case and asked, “Who was that—the young man who interrupted our conversation?”

“That was Luigi Finelli, Gould’s assistant and everything else,” Case answered. “A nervous and possessive little thing. He is here from Italy on an art grant and has latched himself onto Gould like a barnacle. Don’t let him see you get too close to Gould. In fact, it would be in your best interests not to get close to Gould, in any event. He’s bad news sexually.”

“I go where the escort agency sends me,” Drake answered. He’d given Gould a business card. No reason any of Drake’s other clients should know that, though.

“He’s known to be very rough,” Case said. If he thought that would put Toby Drake off, he was very much mistaken.

“You can be very rough,” Drake countered.

“Not like Gould can be. Speaking of sending,” Case said, “I think I got the distinct impression Gould wants me to come work the Sinclairs for him. They are rich as Midas and they like his work. This shouldn’t be hard. But, there’s his agent, Sam Shaffer, over there. I’ll rope him in on the way.” With that, he handed Drake his empty wine glass and walked away.

“Be very careful of that man, Toby.” Drake recognized the voice, the deep husky androgynous voice of Natalie, who had, as Drake remembered, been called Nick before having taken the transition to T-girl all of the way. She worked for an escort agency in the capital city that wasn’t as much a competitor of the one Toby Drake worked for as it was a specialized service that complemented Drake’s. Drake’s service was the premier and highest-drawer escort agency in Washington, D.C., one of the few with a male-for-males section. Natalie’s was all T-girls, in various stages of transformation. Drake could be hired to cross dress and be a woman in a man’s fantasy, but Natalie’s agency could provide female functionality in someone who had once been male. There was an increasingly larger demand for that for some reason, especially among the foreign diplomatic corps in the city. Both Natalie and the owners of her agency had propositioned Drake more than once to transition and come with them, but Drake was still all man and hadn’t entertained an interest in changing that. That didn’t mean he didn’t like bringing out his feminine side with crossdressing, though.

Drake had seen Natalie earlier in the reception across the room with a somewhat portly older man. She was in full-on dress, wearing a slinky black ankle-length number with sparkles and a plunging neckline. Natalie had gone the whole distance, breasts and vagina and all. She had a beautiful face, with emerald-green eyes and a strawberry-blond hair—her own, not a wig—with body and cascade. He wasn’t surprised that she’d come to him when neither was overwise engaged. Drake knew something that probably concerned her and that she would ask him about. But he couldn’t tell her what he knew.

He assumed her warning was about Griffin Gould. “You mean the artist?” he asked. “Have you been dated by him before?”

“Yes, Griffin Gould,” Natalie said. “He didn’t take me anywhere but heaven and hell, but I’ve modeled for him—once—and he’s said he wants me to do so again. I’ll bet he asked you to model for him too.”

“Yes, he did,” Drake answered. “And I got the strong impression that he wanted something else too.”

“Bingo. His idea of posing for him for drawings is to be fucked too.”

“Which he pays full price for?”

“Of course.”

“He looks to be a hunk. What is the problem? Being fucked is what our business is all about, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But he’s cruel and it’s all about him. He scared me.”

“But did he fuck you well?”

“Completely,” Natalie said, and shivered.

“Did this happen before or after your total conversion? I’m sorry. Don’t answer if you think that’s too intrusive, but I wonder how liberal his tastes are.”

“I don’t mind talking about becoming all woman, honey,” Natalie said. “I just have to be careful that the client fully understands what he’s getting and that it’s what he wanted. I’ve heard stories of transformed T-girls getting beaten badly when the john discovered what they were. In Gould’s case, he engages us to paint and fuck precisely because of what we have between our legs.”

“And that is all understood—what you have between your legs—by the man you’re with this evening?”

“Certainly. He’s connected with the artist—with Griffin Gould—which is why we’re here. My man is Sam Shaffer, the artist’s agent. Gould does a line of snatch shots. Who are you here with?”

“Corwin Case, owner of the art gallery that sells most of Gould’s work. He’s sponsoring this exhibit. So, we’re both with someone connected with Gould. I wonder if someone is here with him.”

“There should be, but I don’t see her—and speaking of full conversions, Destiny told me she’d be here with Gould tonight, but I haven’t seen her. I asked him about her because we’re trying to set up a luncheon date, but he just told me she is a flighty one, so he wasn’t betting she’d make it. Imagine that, not showing up for a high-fee arrangement. That doesn’t seem like Destiny to me. She’s still paying the bills on her transformation.”

Natalie and Destiny—as Drake remembered, Destiny’s “before” name had been David Danforth—worked for the same escort agency. “I can’t think of Destiny not showing up for a high-fee assignment either,” he said.

“She called me late this afternoon. She said then she’d be here tonight, but she sounded a bit strange. I thought she might have taken something, but she told me she hadn’t. She posed for Gould earlier and said he was rough with her. She didn’t sound well. Maybe she’s sick. I’ll call her in a bit and check up on her.”

“That sounds like a good idea. I’m on empty, I see,” Drake said, waving his wine glass to verify the point. He was still holding Case’s empty glass too. “While my man is selling one of Gould’s paintings, I think I’ll get a refill and ditch this other glass. It was good seeing you. You look terrific in your new life.”

“Wait a minute,” Natalie said, extending a manicured hand, with silver-polished fingernails that matched Drake’s in hue—anyone looking at them together in their personal beauty and black outfits with silver highlights would think them the perfectly matched couple. “Speaking of phone calls, I came over to ask you something.”

Uh, oh, here it comes, Drake thought, and he was right.

“I’ve been trying to call Liam for days. Have you heard anything from her? I’m worried about her. It isn’t like her to go off the radar for this long, and the agency says she hasn’t checked in for nearly a week.”

Liam was another of the T-girls working for Natalie and Destiny’s escort service. Although she dressed the part, she hadn’t done any of the conversion yet. She planned to and, although her escort agency gave her gigs, they hadn’t fully contracted her until she’d either gotten boobs or a cunt. There was a market for trans like Liam, though. There were men who wanted that—looking female until they are unwrapped and then just being a small, male submissive for them.

“No, I haven’t heard from her,” he answered. “I’ll check when I can. Oh, look, there’s my man, Corwin Case, returning from a sale, I think, because he’s smiling.” Corwin caught Drake’s eye from across the room and wagged another empty wine glass at the young man. Drake wondered if the man would get so drunk he couldn’t get it up in the after-show festivities. But he didn’t really care. The fee would be paid regardless. “Ah, he wants me to meet him at the wine trough. Let me know if you get through to Destiny and find out why she didn’t make it here.”

Drake hurried off, as he didn’t want to talk more about Liam. He didn’t want to have to lie to Natalie about the missing T-girl. Liam wasn’t missing, Toby Drake knew. Liam was dead, possibly murdered. Well, probably murdered. Drake’s roommate was a Washington, D.C., Vice cop by the name of Hardesty. Hardesty had told Drake about Liam’s death because he wanted to know everything Drake knew about the crossdressing rent-boy. They weren’t releasing any information on the murder yet, though. And this had put Drake behind the eight-ball on saying anything to the other prostitutes. That didn’t stop them from asking him if he knew what was going on, though, because they all knew of Drake’s unusual living arrangements—living with and being fucked by a Vice cop when Drake was in the business.

Drake never got around to asking if Natalie got through to Destiny on the phone that night. About an hour later, as the buyer prospects were thinning out, leaving just the drinkers and grazers here of those and not intending to buy, he was standing with Corwin Case, who was gauging whether it was safe to leave, as he didn’t see any potential buyers left, when Sam Shaffer came storming up to them.

“Will you believe that? I paid for the night—well, not for the whole night, I guess. I hadn’t committed to that until I saw how it was going.”

“What are you saying, Sam?” Case asked.

“That little whore I brought. I knew I shouldn’t have let her talk to Griffin. I swear if he didn’t sell so well, I’d dump his ass.”

“Slow down, Sam,” you aren’t making sense, Case said.

“He’s humping her. I brought her, and Gould has taken her back into one of the storerooms and he’s humping her. He’s fucking her on my credit card.”

“Natalie?” Drake couldn’t help saying. He also nearly couldn’t help snorting a laugh. Natalie had warned him off Gould and here she was, back in the back, riding his cock.

“I could kill the little bitch,” Shaffer said. “I’m outta here.” He headed for the exit.

“Well, that decides that,” Case said.

“Decides what?” Drake asked.

“That means we can leave. I didn’t want to leave before Gould’s agent did in case I was gone and missed a sale. He’d never let me forget that. He’d probably send me a bill for his missed commission. But he’s gone, and horny old Gould obviously isn’t interested in selling any more paintings tonight, so we can go.”

“Back to your place?” Drake asked.

“To the gallery. I keep a small apartment there. I don’t feel like crossing the river and going to McLean tonight. Let’s go. There will be taxis still tonight.”

He was right. There were still a couple of taxis out in front of the Artechouse gallery, waiting for fares. The next taxi up was a Capitol Cab Company car. Drake didn’t particularly like the leer the big, black driver gave him as he and Case entered the cab. And he most definitely didn’t like the driver snatching looks at them in the backseat as they moved across the federal complex and onto Connecticut Avenue for the short run up to Farragut Square. Case wanted to start the kissy-feeling phase of the night before they reached the gallery. He was paying the bill, so Drake had to let him put his tongue in Drake’s mouth and fondle him as the taxi moved.

But Drake didn’t like the look the driver was giving them in the rearview mirror. He didn’t like that one little bit.

 To be continued.