Chapter 1
Andrew
2014 A.D.
Lexington, Kentucky
United States of America
Kentucky in the summer wasn’t for the faint of heart. The heat and humidity were bloody oppressive, even at night. I had just woken up sticky from sweating and hastily made my way to the basement gym area. Groggy, sleepy, and depressed as usual, I dove into the half-size Olympic swimming pool for my nightly swim. The pool area was dark, and the moonlight cut straight lines through it, disappearing in the maelstrom of water and my drowning thoughts.
I’d dreamed of him again. Now, if I’d known that Juandre would haunt my thoughts day and night for the past ten years, I would never have fucked the man. I couldn’t dispute my incisors had prickled at the sexy Hispanic ever since he’d pulled over and smiled a cheeky smile at me. As if I couldn’t already read into that, I knew what he would ask me even before he asked. The thing was, I had felt a little peckish and hoped a meal would stop and take me home with him for the night. Prolonging my hunger was never good; my freedom had ended, and I now had to face the organization—the Disciples of the Anunnaki.
The final night of debauchery and discovery was the last item on my list to check off before my year-long sabbatical to clear my head and decide whether I wanted to run away or dismantle the Disciples. Over the years, I had managed to surround myself with them and only Tony and the few men on our inner circle knew the true reason for Lord Andrew Whiskey. My board of directors were corrupt men, and by keeping them close, we’ve been able to monitor their influence in America and across the world.
The day I announced to the board of directors that I was taking leave, the Vice President seemed ecstatic enough for me to pack my bags and leave to find my purpose. The fucker even waved me off, smiling.
En route to the airport, I changed my mind. At first, I wanted to leave and never return, but the answer came to me through a billboard advertisement for RVs. It said; Discover North America and experience freedom. I was only a few miles from the estate’s driveway when I asked the taxi driver to stop and drop me off in front of the enormous billboard. I grabbed my bags and sent the taxi man on his way. Beneath the billboard and the stars, I draped my suit jacket over my suitcase and used it as a pillow while I lay in the grass, looking up at the people smiling around a campfire with the RV in the back. It called to me to do that, and I knew some things in life just needed to be done, no matter how stupid it looked or sounded to others. Clearing my troubled mind, I lay back, looking at the happy, carefree scene and wondering if it was real. I remember asking myself if people could indeed be happy by just living on the road.
Then I dozed off, dreamed about being barefoot, and woke up still dressed in my blue Armani suit. People laughed at me, pointing to my feet. A man even asked, “Are you planning to hike barefoot? Don’t you think you need shoes?” I remembered thinking runners wouldn’t match the suit and that I should unpack my bag and put on jeans and a T-shirt, and then the man said, “Yes, that’s better. Now go find your freedom.”
When I woke up, I grabbed my leather sling bag, stuffed it with socks and the bare necessities, left the rest of my bags out of sight, and started hitchhiking through the United States, up to Canada, and back again.
Leaving the world I knew behind me put everything in perspective. Although I had stayed in touch with my best friend, everyone else had thought I was backpacking through Europe. I thought it sounded classier than hitchhiking through North America.
It was my last stretch home when a ride had pulled up and the driver had made a deal I couldn’t resist. I’d been offered many rides and been made just as many offers from bored housewives to truckers, but when Juandre had pulled up next to me, I just knew I had to fuck him. Juandre, with his perfectly combed dark hair and aristocratic flair of superiority. The young man instantly impressed me, and when we locked gazes, something inside me clicked like it was meant to be, so I shut up and played along. Usually, I would drink my fill, implant a thought that they were tired and to pull over to rest, then they woke up, I would be miles away. But something magnetically drew me to the innocent, yet hopeful, flamboyant young man.
At first, he seemed to be Mommy’s rich bratty boy who had all the money to solve all his problems. Little did he know who and what I was and that, although I was a billionaire, I had never thought happiness and love could be bought. For my amusement, I had decided to play along. Even though I was tired and hungry, it had pissed me off that Juandre had taken one look at me and judged by my appearance. He had thought I was poor, uneducated, and down on my luck, so I gave the kid his fantasy.
Reading his mind, I discovered he lied about his name, so I gave Juandre the impression that I was also someone else. I’d told him I was married and had one boy but that we, my wife and I, were too poor to send him to university. In fact, I was a whiskey tycoon from Lexington, Kentucky, not fully human. I was born in Germany, in one of Hitler’s experimentation camps, where they tried to create the perfect superhuman, but in 1968, I was bitten and infected by an Anunnaki, which made me some kind of new species, like the Anunnaki. But something different.
Over the years, I discovered I had abilities, no regular human had. I knew I had to drink blood to stay alive, but I was able to change my appearance so that every time Juandre looked at me, he saw his dream man, not the real me. And I certainly wasn’t planning on marrying a woman. Since gay marriages weren’t legal in Kentucky, marriage was something other idiots did, not me. I had a l closeted don’t fuck with me persona in the boardroom, and I knew I would lose credibility and be voted out of my own company before returning from my honeymoon. The world was full of people with different stories, tastes, and backgrounds, but most of all, different types of bodies and uncountable ways to fuck and get fucked.
Still, I kept seeing those dark brown eyes looking down at me with love in my dreams.
I’d been obsessively thinking about the cheeky Juandre, not Sam, as he lied and had told me without batting an eyelash. The vision of him smiling or how he crooked his neck to see out of the car when our gazes met for the first time when he offered me a ride, for a ride. Maybe it was his jugular throbbing, or how he looked up at me through his neatly combed chocolate brown bangs, or the clean whiff of soap and cologne when he shook his head. Maybe it was hunger and not lust, but that stern look on his face when he asked me if he could blow me—the anticipation in his chocolate brown eyes. Like a naughty kid asking Santa for a gift, half expecting to hear bad news but hoping for the best.
I’ve never forgotten the same vulnerable look when he entered me from behind, the vulnerability and trust we had shared near the end of the weekend. Our true selves had shone but were dulled by the false facades and small lies about his reality of being happy, rich, and spoiled. He had believed he was rotten in his core and that his kink and dirty secrets weren’t beautiful. But in those few hours, we had fit perfectly, understanding the power exchange—the giving and taking. Learning and surrendering. Affirming and acknowledging each other as a perfect union existing in those moments. Both of us yearning for a closeness and togetherness we weren’t allowed to have in our real lives. Certainly not forever.
When Juandre started with the boy and Daddy games? God, that had revved my motor. Pedal to the metal, he burned my exhaust pipe bright white and opened the door to a kink I had never imagined I would crave. Switching roles excited and confused me, and I had fucking loved it. I shivered; the fleeting thoughts vibrated my insides as I quivered for the sexy Hispanic. My band-aid for missing and yearning for his touch was as useless as throwing a pebble on a geyser and expecting it to miraculously plug the hole.
The problem with my first aid solution was, by the time I’d lined someone up at kink clubs or online hookups, my mood had deflated. It was as if a big fishhook was lodged in my heart, pulling me in the opposite direction towards him. It was the whole weekend, the entire package that I truly wanted to relive. Not just pieces of it. I desired the entire magical moment from when Juandre stopped his little sports car at the side of the road until I climbed into the taxi to pretend I was flying home.
Asking a man to re-enact it was silly, and by the time I’d explained what I needed, I could have fucked this trick twice and had dinner. After one try, I’d given up.
That unforgettable weekend gave me the strength to go home and pick up the pieces of my life. Manage the business with a determination to carry my promise through. But every so often, I reminisced about that weekend. Like today, as I swam like an Olympic freestyle swimmer and my body sliced through the lukewarm water I wondered what Juandre was doing. The sloshing and kicking dulled the world around me, leaving me alone to enjoy my thoughts and memories about him.
Did he marry the girl his family wanted, or had he decided to come out with the truth? Had he continued his studies and become a doctor practicing medicine? Where was he doing that? I wondered whether Juandre was happy and whether he even thought about me. Had he gone looking for the man he’d bought a plane ticket for, only to find the man he had fucked didn’t exist?
I finally decided to do one last tumble turn and kicked myself as hard as possible off the wall and drifted to the opposite side, which was eighty-two feet away, without kicking or using my hands—something I ritually did as I enjoyed floating while the momentum took me to where the stairs were and I exited the pool. I wrapped an extra-large terry cloth towel around my waist and went to the private ensuite of my bedroom to get dressed for work. After a quick shower, I hastily dressed in the crisp, freshly laundered powder blue button-up shirt and only the trousers of the black Armani suit my dutiful friend and butler, Tony Alonzo, daily hung ready for me after my swim.
Preferring to walk barefoot in my space, I left the socks and shoes for later. If I was called to a meeting or had an appointment, I would wear my slip-ons, loafers, or flip-flops, depending on the weather or how important the meeting was. I liked dressing smart but casually, making a statement with my footwear that the boardroom culture didn’t restrict me, nor would I ever wear uncomfortable shoes to impress people. That was one thing I’d learned on my travels. Shoes were important, yet they needed to serve their purpose.
Sitting behind my desk, I struggled to think about anything else. I bent down and ruffled in my desk’s lower drawer, where I had hid Juandre’s number and the other small trinkets I’d collected during my travels. Nothing big, nothing too heavy I couldn’t carry in my backpack. Things like key rings, postcards, or something small like a bottle cap from when I drank a beer on Cannon Beach in Washington.
“Would he even recognize me? I’m just a man he’d given a ride and had taken to a hotel to fuck. For fuck’s sake, Andrew, it’s been ten years,” I said softly to myself. Frustrated with myself, I slammed the drawer closed. “I’ve had enough. I must find him. I need to know if he feels the same about me.”
I looked at the little piece of paper in my hand. I’d looked at it many times and, after ten years, the numbers had faded on the yellowed paper.
He’ll be in his early thirties, and I’ll still look exactly like I did ten years ago. Will he even remember me? Would he stir indignation against the world he now lived in, or would he accept himself even with the false background he’d painted? Would he utterly disregard himself as a gay man, and be the opposite of the man he’d led me to believe he was?
I was tired of wondering. I had constantly weighed the pros and cons over the last ten years, whether or not I should phone and have an honest conversation or pretend to be the human fantasy man Juandre had thought I was. While I had lied then, I wouldn’t be able to maintain the lie now. I mauled my mind numb in circles as to what to do and whether it was even worth it.
Maybe the reality of what truly happened was only my imagination, but I needed to find out. Was it real or not? Otherwise, I’d spend eternity wondering what if, just as I’ve done these past ten years. What if I’m throwing my last chance away? Damnit, I had to know!
With my mind finally made up, I leaned over to call Tony, my personal assistant extraordinaire.
“Tony, I think it’s time to do your thing,” I said.
I heard a loud, “Yes!” as if Tony had muffled the phone and forgot I could hear him through the office door.
