Arousing, yet dangerous-looking, black, tattooed hunk Gabe approaches young, white Parker in a southern beach town hardware store where Parker works in the paint department. Gabe has recently bought an old beach house in the small, wealthy—and pretty much segregated—beach town and professes to want advice on what colors to paint his house and asks Parker to make a house call to help him. Parker is torn, being both aroused by and disturbed by the dangerous-looking Gabe. When Gabe reveals he’s seen Parker dancing a pole at a local gay bar the previous Saturday and is interested in more than just a paint consultation, Parker is put into a quandary on how to respond. Intermittent rain showers and a series of misunderstandings only makes Parker’s decision all the harder to make.
Parker saw him walk into the hardware store again and work his way around the outer aisle. Parker was helping a customer pick out paint and wondered if the good-looking man would work his way over to Parker’s station, being attracted to Parker, or if this was the hardware store he had always come to and Parker just hadn’t noticed him before his visit the other day. Parker regretted that the stimulating exchange had gone south the last time Gabe had been in the store.
Gabe. That’s right, Parker thought. The man had told him his name was Gabriel, but that he preferred being called Gabe. He was all the things that Parker found arousingly attractive in a man, and a couple of things Parker found scarily attractive too. He was older. Parker was twenty-five, but he’d always gone with an older man. He liked to be daddied. The man wasn’t exactly old, though. Maybe in his thirties. And he was good looking and built strong. He’d shown Parker a nice, easy smile when they’d talked before and the man had had an easy way of moving in to show interest in Parker—if, indeed, that was what he’d done. Under the circumstances Parker was a bit confused and more than a bit afraid.
The scary attractions were that Gabriel—if that’s what his name really was—was black and he had a colored right sleeve tattoo that peeked out below the sleeve line of the polo shirt he had been wearing. A black sex partner and one with extensive tattooing were both worlds beyond anywhere Parker had ever gone.
