Welcome to Part Time Lovers.

This is your invitation to play, to experiment, to fulfill your deepest, darkest fantasy or get down and dirty—and then walk away. No regrets, no recriminations, no rules.

We want you to make the rules for your encounter. There are no forms to complete, no wish lists, no compatibility tests. Just jump right in. Part Time Lovers is about hooking up with the right person for right now.

We know your desires change—maybe even from one day to the next—because ours do. We created this Web site to accommodate every single one of your desires.

This week you might want a quick fuck, next week that high school fantasy or the hot vampire you just read about in your favorite book. Part Time Lovers is the place for you to find your dream lover.

So come on in. Someone is waiting for you.

Mercy and Jules

Jules couldn’t believe it.

Shea was supposed to be back at work at Glass City today, so he dropped in on his way to work.

No Shea.

He’d wandered over for an afternoon snack—still no Shea. He stayed late and stopped by at eleven o’clock on his way home. No Shea.

What the hell?

He raced home and checked the airport arrivals on the Web. Any and all flights that might have originated in Australia were on time. Not a single delay. Not a single cancellation. What were the odds of that?

So maybe he’d decided to stay a few days longer. Maybe he’d decided to stay permanently.

Jules picked up the phone. He didn’t care that it was almost three o’clock in the morning. Over the years, he’d called Mercy plenty of times in the middle of the night for a whole lot less than this. This was an emergency.

He didn’t wait for her to growl anything more than, “Hello.”

“I need you to go to Glass City.”

“Huh?”

“First thing in the morning. They open at six. I checked.”

Another Huh? had Jules fuming. “Pay attention, Mercy. I’m desperate. This is important.”

He could picture her as she straightened up, pushed her hair off her face, and rubbed her hands over her cheeks.

“Okay,” she said, her voice solid and clear. “Try that again.”

“I need you to go to Glass City when they open.”

Proving she’d at least been listening, Mercy groaned. “That’s in less than three hours.”

“I know.”

“Okay,” she replied with a sigh. “I’m guessing Shea’s back today?”

“He was supposed to be back yesterday,” Jules whispered. “He wasn’t there.”

“Maybe he just took an extra day or two at home. Maybe his flight was cancelled. Maybe he was too jetlagged to work.”

“Stop,” Jules ordered, knowing Mercy could maybe almost any subject clear to death. “Maybe, maybe, maybe. I need to know, and I can’t ask. I just can’t.”

Mercy groaned. “Goodbye, Jules. If I have to get up in a couple of hours, I need more sleep. I’ll phone you as soon as I know what happened.”

“I’ll be at Part Time Lovers.”

“Fine.”

She hung up without another word. He knew she’d be asleep within minutes of switching her alarm clock from eight to quarter to six.

Jules also knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep; he wasn’t even going to try. Instead, he changed into sweats and a T-shirt and headed to the gym, thanking the owners who kept it open twenty-four hours a day.

He had one hundred and eighty minutes to kill before heading back to Part Time Lovers. He’d spend them with the hardcore gym rats—the only type who showed up at this hour.

He ran full out on the treadmill, lifted weights until his arms trembled with the strain, did squats and push-ups until he was dripping wet, and still Shea’s whereabouts continued to haunt him.

Jules had been counting the days until Shea’s return. Honestly? He’d been counting the hours. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he’d counted the minutes.

His crush, which had been entertaining, sexy, and full of possibility, had, with the object of it absent, somehow turned into obsession.

It scared the hell out of him.

And there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it.

Aching in every muscle, Jules walked home in the pre-dawn light and headed straight for the shower. For the first time since Shea left, he didn’t masturbate to one of the Shea-fantasies he’d been enjoying for months, even before Shea had left for Australia.

Tonight, this morning, whatever the hell it was, he was too tired and stressed. Even his usual inexhaustible cock wasn’t interested. Nothing worked, not even when Jules thought about fucking Shea and stroked his cock, not even when he pulled up his favorite part of the Shea-fantasy.

That fantasy was both erotic and romantic, though the repertoire had grown quite aggressively over the months since he’d first seen Shea.

He had fantasies about two tired bodies—strangers—coming together in the sauna, massaging each other from head to toe and everywhere in between. No words, no kissing, no fucking, just the long, slow movement of hands over every inch of a body.

He had voyeuristic fantasies. Jules would somehow be standing invisible in Shea’s apartment on a hot summer day. He’d see him arrive home, ripping off his T-shirt as he closed the door, toeing off his shoes, and padding across the floor to the refrigerator. He’d open the door and stand there, wallowing in the chilled air.

Jules would be close enough to see the goose bumps on his arms and his dark flat nipples pebble in the cold. And then Jules would follow Shea to the very private patio—although Jules had absolutely no idea of where or how Shea lived—and perch on the railing while Shea stripped naked in front of him.

He’d take the beer bottle, beaded with condensation, and roll it over his belly while Jules undid his pants to relieve the pressure against his zipper from his burgeoning cock.

Shea would move to the lounge chair and lay back, his body damp and relaxed. He would spread his legs so Jules could see everything, balls, ass, and cock.

By this time, Jules’ prick was stiff and his balls had pulled up tight and full against the base of it. When he imagined Shea’s shout of release, Jules always joined him.

Except this morning.

Even his favorite—the first date fantasy—didn’t work, though Jules had spent a whole lot of time embellishing it.

Thursday afternoon, five o’clock. Jules stops in at Glass City for an iced cappuccino to drink on his walk home. He’s surprised to find Shea sitting at the window—he’s never seen him here on a Thursday.

“Hi,” says Shea. “What’s up?”

Jules smiles, careful not to look too eager. “Not much, just getting some fuel for the walk home. What about you?”

Shea hesitates for a minute then, as if he has rehearsed the words, whispers in a rush, “I was waiting for you, hoping to see you. What about a drink?”

The responsive smile that bloomed on Jules’ face had to have blown Shea away because he comes off his stool and grabs Jules by the hand. “Where shall we go?”

They stop at George, the lovely dark bar down the street from Jules’ condo. Sitting at the bar, they talk for hours and, despite the many differences between them, it is as if they’ve known each other forever.

When Jules finally says, “Will you come home with me?” both of them know that the question—and the answer—are just formalities. From the moment Shea said, “What’s up?” ending up in bed together with a foregone conclusion.

They walk toward False Creek to Marinaside, swinging their joined hands as if they were teenagers. When the door shuts behind them, neither hesitates nor asks permission, they simply remove their clothes. They might have done so in front of each other hundreds of times before this time.

There is nothing awkward about this first encounter.

They step over the fallen garments and walk together into the bedroom. They kiss, once, a kiss that seems to last but a single amount and forever.

And then they fuck their brains out.

Jules peered down at his uncooperative cock and sighed. What if Shea never returned? What if Jules never found out what happened to him? What if Shea really went back to Australia to get married? To a woman?

Would it be worse if he went back to Australia to get married to a man? Jules was driving himself crazy.

Because, truthfully, and it was about time he acknowledged the truth, he really had absolutely no idea whether Shea was even interested in men. He might guess. He might wish. But he didn’t know.

Just because he was gorgeous, just because Jules wanted to taste every single one of his many tattoos, didn’t mean it would ever happen.

But as he had long ago discovered, the heart—and the cock—wanted what they wanted. Possibility or suitability had nothing to do with it.

Jules didn’t turn on the lights when he got to Part Time Lovers that morning, didn’t boot up the servers or make a pot of coffee. Instead, he sat at the long, lonely bar and poured himself a glass of Ketel One. Straight up. He didn’t take the bottle out of the freezer; he opened a new one. Even in the state he was in, he didn’t think he could drink frozen vodka at this hour of the morning.

Sipping at the smooth clear liquid, he waited for the elevator bell to ring, signaling Mercy’s arrival. When it dinged, he closed his eyes, filled up the glass for the third time, and threw the contents down his throat.