"Tomorrow. Bring your hands around my sides as I lay enveloped in your lap. Hold me in your hands until tomorrow, one hand cupping my balls, making me vulnerable to your touch, and the other hand possessing my cock closely—and stroke, stroke, stroke. Ahhhhhhh. Still cupping my balls with one hand, move the fingers of the other to my hole and invade and stretch, preparing me for you. Then at the stroke of tomorrow, turn me onto my belly, encase my thighs with your knees, and plunge into me with your firm cock, your palms pushing down on my shoulder blades, and ride me, ride me, r i d e m e . . . Ahhhhhhhhhh!"

Poetry. The note from my absent lover, briefly back in New York to check on his financial affairs, was that and more to me. I sighed and turned off the computer and went to bed and lay in the dark wondering at how I had been so lucky as to end up with such a perfect lover.

Sheer chance. It had been a series of unconnected chances. The first time we had met had been half way up an alp in Switzerland. I laughed at the memory. Neither if us was serious climbers, but we had ended up meeting there. Hank was in a party on its way up, and I was in one on its way down. Both parties had stopped the night at the old timber and stone chalet perched on the side of the Matterhorn just before the climbing began to get serious. I had sat off to one side by the fire in the main room as the others sat about talking about reaching the summit and the newcomers listened seriously.

But Hank had drifted over to me.

"So, how did you find the climb?" he asked.

"Me? I'm afraid I only made it as far as the next hut. I got the first signs of altitude sickness and wasn't interested in risking my life or anyone else's just to stand on top of a mountain. I'm not a serious climber, I'm afraid." I replied, wondering if he would make it, as he seemed older in years than the others in his team. Still he looked to be in superb shape, so perhaps he could outclimb the rest of them.

"I doubt I'll make it either," he said smiling. "I used to climb when I was young, and my son decided this trip would be a great present for my birthday and something we could do together. I went up a practice mountain, not much more than a hill, really, with this group already, and I barely made it to the top of that."

"So, which one is your son?" I asked.

"He couldn't make it," he said. "His wife's about to have a baby. Their first. So he stayed home."

He was smiling a wide, honest smile, his dark eyes looking into mine and crinkled at the corners, his lips full and inviting. I shook my head to clear it of the sudden arousal he was causing in me. And I had to smile too.

"I was supposed to come with someone too. But he couldn't make it either," I told him. I had no idea why I had lied to him on that, though. I was here alone because my lover had died in an automobile wreck outside of Sydney just before the trip. But somehow I didn't want to tell this friendly and inviting—and desirable—stranger that. I thought then he'd only be fucking me out of sympathy.

We both smiled. I felt that knowing we were both there alone was causing a small sexual thrill to run between us. "They both wasted a lot of money." I said, "and it means I've got a room to myself." I added, hoping Hank was thinking the way I was. After a week's climbing—alone when I hadn't planned to be alone—I was feeling both on-the-edge vulnerable and randy.

He looked over at the main crowd. "I don't think anyone will notice our absence," he said. "But the blond giant over there is from my town back home so . . . ," he trailed off.

"So we'd better be quick," I added, getting up and moving to the passageway that led to the ground floor rooms. In a moment Hank was behind me in the dim passage, pressing up close and running his hands over my torso and my hips.

I opened the door to my room, and we landed against the back of it as it closed. He kissed me, and I sucked his tongue in and pulled him in hard. His thick rod pressing against my hip as mine moved against his belly. He was unbuttoning my pants and pushing them down as our mouths wrestled in the way I liked. Strong and demanding. Eager and hot. Then he was on his knees, his head of steel grey hair sinking over my engorging rod. His dark eyes looked up at me in a lost way as he tongued my cap and stroked my length. Then he did a good job of swallowing me, and I lay my head back and moaned loudly, a moan of release and need as I enjoyed the first good mouth on my dick I'd had for weeks.

I had thought he would be the dominant one, but once I was throbbing and gripping his hair as I fucked into his throat and gazed into his eyes, he pulled back. I was confused as he came in for a kiss and pulled me back towards the narrow bed. Then he fell back and was stripping off his jeans. I pulled them free as he kicked off his briefs and lifted his legs wide. His eyes were begging me to fuck him as his cock bounced against his belly and he gripped it and tugged his balls and stroked himself. I fingered his hole, and he wrapped his legs about my back and pushed his hips up now, saying "Yes, yes. That feels so good."

I held his hips and fed my tool down into his hole as he watched it disappear, groaning and moaning then crying out in small held-back cries as I stroked shallowly inside him. He came in a fountain that landed over his chest and face. I sunk deep to the limit inside him and plowed him briefly and then pulled out, shooting my load across him, my cum landing on top of his on his chest and belly. His legs dropped, and I fell onto him, and we kissed again deeply and slowly.

In a few minutes he pulled away, though, and cleaned himself up at the basin in the room as I lay on the bed and watched him.

"So, why didn't your friend come?" he asked, making conversation to cover the embarrassment of us both that we had fucked within minutes of meeting each other. I wasn't the kind to do that, and I didn't think Hank was that kind either.

I looked away, wanting to keep this meeting simple and not wanting him to see the pain of the lie on my face. "He decided he'd rather be living by the beach in Hawaii with blond twenty years younger than me," I said, hoping he wouldn't pursue the point and catch me out in the convenient lie.

Hank stopped in the middle of sponging the cum off his shirt. "Oh," he said, locking his eyes briefly to mine in the small mirror over the basin, before dropping his gaze again. "I'm sorry," he finally said. And I sucked in my breath from the way he said it, almost as if he could look straight through me to the truth.

I shrugged, and tried to bolster the lie. "After six months I'm starting to get used to being on my own again."

"Well I'd better get back before I'm missed," he said, tucking his shirt back into his pants and running his fingers through his hair to smooth it.

There was no farewell kiss, and in a moment he had slipped out of the door and was gone. I threw on my dressing gown and headed to the showers to clean up. Then I crawled into bed and spent too long trying to forget how much I missed having a man I wanted to be with around all the time.

In the morning his party had left on the upward climb before I was even up.

***

I had lied to Simon about my son booking this mountain-climbing trip for my birthday and then reneging because his wife was having a baby. My lover had booked the trip—and paid for it too—and then I had found him in bed with my driver. I had taken this trip for revenge. I had taken both tickets and boarded the flight the next morning not because I had wanted to come here alone—I hadn't been the one who wanted to come here at all—but simply to make Russ pay. He had lived off me in so many respects and for so long that I was determined to get a little back and to make him pay if he was going to cheat on me.

And I had continued to take my revenge. Russ had cheated on me, so I was doing everything I could in the way of payback. I had flaunted myself in front of all of the other men in our climbing party. The trip had been booked through a gay travel agency, so I wasn't worried that the men might not be interested. And I had taken them on one after the other—sometimes two of them at once. I had saved the best for last—the blond giant I'd told Simon was from my home town. He wasn't from my home town. He was some Scandinavian who, as far as I knew, could speak no more English than the phrase "I want to fuck you."

I had told Simon our tryst would have to be a short one, because this was the Scandinavian's evening with me. I'd finally learned the Norwegian words for "OK, let's fuck tonight."

I have no firm idea why I lied to Simon about everything when we'd met. He was so nice and friendly and had been so open and honest with me. I think it might have been because he instantly reminded me of Russ—of the best parts of Russ that I could remember. And I was still so wounded by what Russ had done. But I also still ached for Russ. I went with Simon that day, I think, because I still ached for Russ, no matter what he'd done to me. And I also lied to Simon, I believe, because I was ashamed for him to think I would open my legs just for anyone—although that's exactly what the desire for revenge against Russ's transgression had led me to on this trip.

After I left him and found the blond giant and let him manhandle me on the squeaking bed in his room, pumping and pumping me until we were afraid the bed frame would fall through the floor to the room below, I tried to forget Simon—to push him out of my mind. But he was so much like the Russ I had first loved. My climbing party was half way up to the base camp hut the next day before I realized that I didn't want to leave Simon that way—perhaps that I didn't want to leave him at all.

I had gotten his business address in Sydney, and I spent most of the next year putting my affairs in New York in order so that I could be gone for a large chunk of time. This would have been a far easier chore if I'd still had my driver . . . and my accountant, Russ.

***

Eight months later I bumped into Hank as I was buying a gelati cone from the ice cream counter at the Opera House end of the row of shops that ran under Circular Quay station in Sydney.

I felt a touch on my shoulder and turned around. The face of the man behind me looked familiar. But I couldn't place it and just stared blankly.

He looked uncertain. "I'm sorry, you look like someone I met on an alp in Switzerland," he said apologetically.

Then it fell into place.

"Hank," I said, smiling at him in pleasant remembrance. "The Chalet. You going up; me down."

"Yes," he said with a sigh of obvious relief at not having made an idiot of himself. "But I rather think I mostly lay there and you went up and down," he added in a whisper, and then gave a nervous little laugh as we both blushed in remembrance.

I got my ice cream and we moved away from the crowded counter.

"A small world," he said, looking me over appraisingly. "You look good."

"And you," I answered, still feeling awkward at having a casual conversation like this with a stranger I'd known so fully and deeply. "What are you doing here?"

"My son again," Hank answered. "But this time he and his wife are with me. Over there," he said, turning and pointing at a young dark-haired couple with a stroller.

"We've been here for a week, and it's our last day, so we came to have another ride on a ferry in the harbor again. And you? You live here?" he asked.

"No. I did live here, but now I live up the coast," I said. "I'm just here for the day. I had to check into my business in Manly. If it wasn't so hot I would have gone straight back," I said, indicating the melting ice cream I held.

He pulled my ice cream-filled hand to him and dipped his head to lick slowly and suggestively up the cone as he looked into my eyes.

I almost laughed out loud it was so corny, but the look in his eyes had my dick jumping and I kept my mouth closed. It was the sweetest offer I had had in a long time.

"Let me go speak to my son and his wife for a moment, and then I'll come back to you . . . if you want me to," he said. I couldn't tell him no. I said nothing, and he got the message.

I watched as he went over to the couple and talked to them very briefly and then came back to me.

"May, my daughter-in-law, wants to head back, Ray said, as it's about time for Fay's nap, and I haven't much time. I need to get on the Net and get some work done before the office opens back home. So, why don't you show me to someplace private?"

I led the way to the nearest hotel, only to find it was fully booked. We moved to the next one and same story. We found out that there was a Lions Club convention in town, the annual international one, and apparently every hotel in town was full.

We could have found somewhere, I was sure, but I took it as a sign.

"Well I think I am going to have to show you Sydney instead," I said. He looked disappointed, but I realised I was mainly ready to give up looking because I was getting tired of hurried casual sex.

Instead, we went to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and by the time we left, we both knew that we had similar taste and were quite comfortable in each other's company. Then it was the design centre, a coffee, and on to the huge steel bolts that connected the Sydney Harbour bridge to its stone moorings. We walked along the edge of the harbour and talked and finished up at a small restaurant ready for another coffee and talked some more. Hank called his son and said we'd be having dinner together and he'd be back after that.

After dinner we strolled back towards Circular Quay, and as we passed under the moorings of the bridge, Hank walked up the grassy slope into the shadows of the bridge's stone foundations and pulled me with him. It was Tuesday and there was no one about, and he pulled me into the dark shadows thrown across the grass by the bridge. Then he silently lay back on the slope and pulled me down with him.

As we kissed, I unzipped him and reached in for his rod and pulled it free, and he unzipped me and pulled mine free as he shimmied his hips and slipped his own pants down. Somehow our lips remained connected as I sunk my cock inside him.

I plowed him in silence, just the lapping of the water and the muted city noises in the background. I plowed him deeply and slowly and we came together as a train rumbled overhead, drowning my cry of release, me deep inside him and him soaking my belly. I lay there on top of him as I softened inside him, his hands running all over me, our mouths joined again.

We were still brushing off the grass and giggling like teenagers as we returned to the footpath, trying to look as if nothing had happened.

***

I was sure now. I had wanted to be sure. If Simon hadn't been muttering that he loved me while we fucked and wasn't giving me that sad expression now at the prospect of leaving off again, I wouldn't have had the strength to go on. But I was sure now, so I did.

"So, do you have anyone waiting for you at home up the coast?" I asked. I tried to keep my voice light and off hand, but this was possibly the second most important question of my life that I had to ask.

"No, No. No one at all," he answered somewhat wistfully.

And with that I moved on to the most important question of my life, "Would you mind terribly having someone at home waiting for you when you came down to Sydney?"

He stopped abruptly and turned to me and looked deeply into my eyes. I could hardly make him out, though, because my eyes were misting over. I was trembling and trying quite unsuccessfully to put a brave face on just how important this moment was to me.

He did understand my meaning, though. And with misting eyes of his own, he took my arm in his and pulled in close and said, quietly, "No, I don't think I'd mind terribly at all. Not at all. In fact, that would be very nice."

We walked in silence for several minutes, each of us struggling to control our emotions.

But then he spoke again. "But what of your son and his wife and the child back there? Can you just—?"

I cut him off with a nervous little laugh. "Oh them. I don't know them from Adam. I don't have a son; I don't have any children. I just asked them for the time when I went over to them back there. They were just part of my escape mechanism if you said you wouldn't have me."

He was still in confusion, but he hadn't let loose his clutching hold on my arm as we continued to stroll into the future. I did, though, make a mental note that I'd best stop telling him these gigantic lies.