The Art of It

“This was all to make a point, Shayne, although you do have a beautiful body, and a fine ass, and a nice, tight hole. And I always enjoy being the first. But we did it to make a point. I don’t want a damn thing out of Jameson’s safe. And we can burn these photos together—unless you want them for your trophy case.”

“I still don’t understand,” I stammered.

“Jameson warned me that you didn’t believe my book. That you didn’t believe that normal men could just be seduced and suborned to do illegal, unpatriotic things for sex. I—with some help from Jerome and lots of cooperation from you—have just proved you wrong. I want you to write a better article for Spy than one of disbelief and dismissiveness. I think now that you can’t possibly write your piece from disbelief that it could happen. There is an art to it. You’ve just been had by the art, and it took less than twenty-four hours.”

Again a stare down, and this time I just couldn’t help myself. I started laughing. First a nervous giggle and then a full, uncontrollable session of belly laughing that was only stanched when Ted put his arms around me and his lips to mine and rocked me back and forth in my chair.

“Do you need more notes, Shayne, or are we done here?” Ted whispered in my ear.

“I think I could use a few more notes,” I said. I couldn’t take my eyes off the photographs. More and more of what happened the previous night was coming back to me. And I couldn’t deny the pleasure I saw in these photos and remembered from the actual coupling.