A gay story: Per Anum Ch. 09: Full Service I jumped at the knock. Which was dumb, because I’d ordered the delivery, and was expecting it to arrive today. They’d even given me a fairly narrow window of expected arrival, into which they’d landed neatly.
“Coming!” I yelled at my apartment door, mentally adding a star to the online review for the timely arrival. I hopped up and headed there, double checking as I went to make sure my preparations were all in order. None of the furniture had rearranged itself when I wasn’t looking–one can never be too careful–and opened the door.
The first thing I noticed was how green his eyes were. Vivid bottle green, not the more typical hazel. The kind of green that you’d associate with a rainforest, not a human. It took me a second to even recognize that he was trying to talk to me.
“I’m sorry, what?” I managed. Smooth, Chris. As ever, you epitomize smooth.
He gave me a little smile that managed to straddle the line between I-am-a-polite-professional and are-you-serious-right-now. It was kind of impressive.
“I asked if you’d ordered the FitPro X-12. Are you Chris?”
Oh yeah, the delivery. That would explain the giant crate he had on a handcart. “Yes, that’s me. You’re in the right place. Please, come in.” I opened the door to its widest and stepped aside, pointing him toward the destination room. “I tried to clear a path for you,” I said, as he deftly navigated the cart through the door, “You’re headed for that room, there.” Once he and his cargo were fully inside, I closed the door and hastened ahead of him to make sure the crate would fit through the channel I’d opened in the furniture.
“Appreciate it,” he said. “You’d be surprised how often people order something like this and never consider how to get the thing where they want it. And then they complain about me having to move furniture. So thanks for thinking ahead.” I guided him into what had originally been the never-used guest room, and then the hardly-used home office, and was now the constantly-used home gym. There wasn’t a ton of space, with the other equipment I had in there, but I’d pushed everything against the walls to make as much room as I could.
“You can just put it anywhere on that end of the room,” I said. “I can always reposition it when I set it up.” I’d pressed myself against the wall, too, to make way for the big crate. The delivery guy–he wore a little nametag on his uniform shirt that read “Owen”–maneuvered his cart with the expertise of long practice. With the crate largely between us until now, I hadn’t gotten a good look at him aside from those captivating green eyes, but as he passed me with his burden, I had the perfect opportunity.
He was a compact block of muscle, a bit shorter than my own six feet but broad in the chest and shoulders. A chest and shoulders, I might add, that strained the cotton of his uniform. The sleeves seemed to barely contain his biceps. And the khaki shorts…oh my. Let’s just say the view from behind was almost as good as the front, even with those remarkable eyes.
“No can do,” Owen grunted, as he pushed the crate off the cart onto the floor at the end of the room. I blinked. Had he been talking that whole time?
“No can do what?” I asked. “Did I miss something?”
“Setup,” he replied, straightening up. “And it’s you that can’t do it.”
“I’m confused.” And a little irritated. I wasn’t an engineer or anything, and granted my first impression on Owen hadn’t been one of towering intellect, but I was pretty sure I could unpack an exercise machine.
He shrugged. “It’s company policy. The FitPro X-12 is a complicated machine. People try to set these up, do it wrong, get hurt, try to sue…better for everyone if somebody trained does it from the get-go.” He gestured at the space around the crate. “This is a pretty good spot; you’ll want the clearance to make sure nothing starts knocking into walls.” He had a clipped, brisk manner of speech that was really clashing with my naturally verbose brain.
He stared at me for a moment, as though waiting for a response. I hadn’t heard a question, so I raised my eyebrows in silent inquiry. With a nearly-suppressed sigh, he said, “Is this location acceptable? Should I move it?”
I could only shrug. “You’re the one trained for this. If that’s where you think it’ll fit best, sure.” With a sharp nod, he turned and bent over to open the crate…and my mild annoyance drained away. Whoever gave him those shorts deserved a medal.
The crate was designed to come apart around the machine, and Owen soon had it dismantled and set aside. The device itself, packed for travel, was a cube of intermingled struts and bars that resembled one of those nightmarish hand puzzles with all the curving metal bits twisted together. How that would transform into the sleekly designed all-in-one exercise machine featured in the photos and videos I’d seen, I could not imagine. Maybe having someone set it up for me was not such a bad plan after all.
Owen fished something out and tossed it to me. “Owner’s manual,” he said as I caught it. “You’ll want to study that.” Obediently, I opened the booklet. ‘The FitPro X-12 got its name because its modular design includes twelve distinct configurations, allowing you to exercise any part of your body any way you choose. The simple, user-friendly structure makes it quick and easy to switch from one arrangement to another, so you can have the healthy, fit body you’ve always wanted without leaving your own home.’ Seemed more like marketing than instructions for operation.
Fortunately, the subsequent pages actually did have directions for configuring the machine into its various forms, but I found it hard to focus on reading. Owen was efficiently putting the FitPro together, and watching him bending over and lifting things was much more compelling than the manual. As I watched, he went up on his toes to fiddle with something on the top of the machine–when had it gotten so tall?–and reaching over his head made his shirt ride up, flashing me a set of washboard abs. Most distracting.
“You seem to know a lot about this thing,” I said slowly, hardly believing my own daring. “Do you have one yourself?”
“Nah,” he grunted without looking up. “I make do with the gym in my apartment building.” He actually paused then, glancing at me as though about to say something else, then shook his head and returned to work.
“What?” I asked. “You look like you wanted to say something.”
“None of my business.”
“Well, now you have to tell me,” I said. “You’ve piqued my curiosity.”
Owen sighed, but stopped long enough to look at me. “Saw a sign for a fitness center on my way up. You have a gym here in the building?”
“Yeah…?”
He gestured at the room around us, at the half-assembled machine beside him. “So why do you need all this then?”
“Oh.” I felt myself blushing. “That. Uh, there’s a perfectly good reason for that. Really. It’s not at all ridiculous.” He just eyed me, silent. Expectant.
I blew out a breath. “Fine. So, there’s this guy, Mike. We must have similar schedules or something because he works out in the building’s gym at the same times I do. Practically every time I’m there, he is too. He’s hot, and he works out in these tiny little bike shorts…” Ahem. “Eventually, I got up the nerve to approach him.” My cheeks heated further, although Owen didn’t look up from his work. At least there’s no judgement about revealing I’m gay. “So I finally hit on him…and not until after I’ve started do I notice the wedding band. He’s not only straight, he’s married.”
Owen actually snorted a laugh. “Heh. Happens to the best of us.”
“So that’s why I can’t show my face there anymore,” I said.
His brows drew down. “Why not? This guy giving you trouble or something?”
I blinked. “What? No, no, nothing like that. He was actually really nice about it…seemed to find the whole thing hilarious, to be honest. Only…well, the next time I was in the gym, I made the mistake of going at my usual time. And his wife shows up.”
That got Owen smirking again. He was enjoying this far too much. At least he was still rapidly assembling my new exercise machine while he laughed at my suffering. “Oh yeah? Can’t have been pretty.”
“Oh, it wasn’t…just not in the way you think. She comes striding into the gym like she’s invading the place, looks me over, then gives me this nod like I’ve passed the test and tells me straight out I have her blessing to fuck her husband, as long as we film it so she can watch. There were five other people in there, including Mike, and she just announced this to the whole room!” My face was on fire. Owen, of course, was laughing his ass off. It was kind of shocking, the way his whole manner transformed. He had straight white teeth and a charming smile to go with those beautiful green eyes; it made him seem a lot more approachable than when he was being all gruff and professional. Owen’s laughter was infectious, and I found myself chuckling despite the embarrassment.
“Thus, home gym,” I finished. “Never going in there again. Death by mortification does not seem like a good way to go.” To rub salt in the wound, the pair had even invited me to the equinox party they were throwing next week. As if I’d show up at at whatever bacchanal they were planning. No way that would end well.
“Did you do it?” Owen asked, once he’d gotten himself back under control.
“Do what?” I asked.
“Fuck the husband and film it.” His manner had gone from mirthful to sharp. Intent.
“What?” I choked. “No, of course not! He’s straight, remember?” Not to mention that hooking up with married guys, whatever the circumstances, is a terrible idea.
“Too bad,” he said. “I’d have liked to have seen that.”
I goggled. Was I hallucinating? And when had he gotten so close to me? His hands curling around my waist made the chaos whirling in my brain screech to a stop.
“Machine’s done,” he said quietly, our faces inches apart. Owen’s body came up against mine full length–and from what I could feel against my thigh, things were definitely lengthening. “Fancy a quick workout? It might need breaking in. Good idea to test things a bit before I go.”
My suspicion that he wasn’t thinking about leg day was confirmed when his hands started working their way up under my shirt to explore my body. Blunt, strong fingers mapped the contours of my torso, tracing every ridge and curve of muscle.
“Are…” I found myself panting and had to force out the words. Somehow, my hands were on him, sliding around that rock-solid core of his. “Are you sure this is a good idea? Won’t you get in trouble?” My body was increasingly sure this was an excellent idea, but somebody had to be practical.
“Nah,” he said in his laconic way. “You’re my last stop of the day.” As he spoke, he peeled my shirt off over my head. Once free of it, I discovered that my hands had taken it upon themselves to return the favor. We spent a long, pleasant moment just touching each other, skin on skin. Owen’s powerfully muscled torso was dusted with golden hair a shade paler than the close-cropped hair on his head, adding a bit of roughness to his otherwise smooth skin.
I leaned in to kiss him, and he turned his head. Fair enough, not all guys were into that, so I course corrected and ran my mouth along his neck instead. The scent of what must have been his aftershave, subtle and earthy, filled my nose as the soft skin of his throat radiated heat against my lips. His whole body was hot–and I mean that literally, as in temperature. Not that he wasn’t also hot in a figurative sense, but you know what I mean. The guy was a furnace in khaki shorts, and having him pressed up against me like this was making me think the little clothing we had left was too much.
He arched into me, pushing his neck against my mouth, and made a pleased little noise when I found just the right spot. One of Owen’s hands slid down to squeeze appreciatively at the curve of my ass, and the other wandered up my back to curl over one shoulder. Between them, I was drawn even harder against him, and it wasn’t just the pressure getting harder. I groaned against his neck when he ground his hips against mine, our cloth-covered cocks rubbing together in tantalizing promise.
Hands still on me, Owen drew me back with him, over to the FitPro X-12 in all its fully-assembled glory. I hardly noticed it, much more interested in what his hands were doing to my waistband. He sat down on the padded bench protruding from the machine–the manual said it could be used for bench press, leg press, and probably half a dozen other things–and as he went down, he drew my pants down with him, pushing both pants and boxers to the floor.
My erection popped out in front of his face. With another of those surprisingly charming little smiles, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the head. I groaned again as Owen, with unexpected gentleness, started kissing and licking the head of my cock. One of his hands wrapped the base of my shaft, squeezing and stroking gently as his mouth worked the head, while his other hand began toying with my balls in a multi-pronged attack that had my eyes rolling up.
Then he apparently decided playtime was over. Relaxing his jaw, he leaned forward and swallowed me down in a single, slow glide. I’d barely gotten my gasp out before he was pulling back and doing it again, and again, bobbing faster and faster each time. One of my hands fell onto his head, reflexively guiding him down and back as he took me into his throat over and over (not that he needed the direction). The other hand I had to brace against the FitPro to keep myself from toppling over, as his accelerating assault on my dick turned my legs to jelly.
I would have been fine with staying right there until I blew, but Owen had other plans. Slowing down to a steady, languid pace with his mouth, he kicked off his shoes and, briefly lifting his hips off the bench, peeled down those delightful shorts. How he managed all that without missing a beat of his steady sucking, I have no idea. His erection was thick and uncut, flushed red and steel-hard. Owen gave himself a few slow strokes before pulling off my cock altogether and leaning back on the bench, erection standing tall over his muscled stomach.
Owen opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was a groan as I practically dove onto his cock. Like the rest of him, it blazed with heat, and it filled my mouth with a delicious mixture of clean sweat and salty-sweet precum. The warm musk of aroused man, one of my favorite scents in the world, filled my nose as I took more and more of him down my throat. Sliding his fingers into my hair, he moaned his approval as I started sucking in earnest. I couldn’t match his rapid, apparently effortless deepthroating, but I got it all down, and when I started using my tongue to spice things up all Owen could do was squirm and gasp, his hands clutching reflexively at my head.
My saliva, already coating his thick shaft, started running down over his balls. I collected some on the tip of my finger and slid it down beneath them until I found the puckered prize I’d been searching for. Owen’s next cry was an octave higher than the last as my spit-slick fingertip started toying with his sphincter. Grinning inwardly, I pulled my mouth off his cock and worked my lips down over his balls and across his perineum. Pushing his legs up towards his chest, I buried my face in the cleft of his tautly muscled ass and sealed my mouth over his hole.
The noise Owen made was hungry, even needy, his gruff self-confidence gone as he bucked against my mouth. I spread his cheeks with my hands–Owen had taken over holding his knees against his chest–and worked his hole with my tongue as thoroughly as I could. As his writhing demands rose in desperation, I returned a finger to the mix, sliding it into him alongside my tongue, and ratcheted up his cries yet again. I pushed it a little deeper, reaching, searching…and when Owen’s whole body arched off the bench, I knew I’d found my objective.
I played with his prostate for a bit, experimenting to see what kinds of sounds I could wring out of him, all the while pushing my tongue against his hole, adding more saliva and loosening him further. Eventually, I added another finger, moving my mouth to his balls while I spread him wide open with thrusting, scissoring fingers. I had lube in my bedroom, but something told me Owen wasn’t willing to wait that long, so I just kept spitting onto my fingers with every couple of thrusts, pushing more into him and spreading it inside.
By the time my third finger joined the fray, Owen was a sweaty, quivering wreck, and I was dripping so much precum there was an unbroken string connecting the head of my cock to the floor. I kept stretching him, though, refusing to ruin things by rushing…until Owen gave me such a pointed glare that it was clear his patience had run out. I stood up and straddled the bench, my cock leaving a gleaming trail across the surface. Taking Owen’s legs, I drew them up and over my shoulders until our hips aligned, and pushed forward.
Heat. So much heat. I’d thought the outside of his body was warm, but the feel of sliding my cock into his ass was something else entirely. He squeezed me like silken fire, slick and strong and so hot it had sweat popping out all over me by the time I sank to the hilt. We both groaned as I hit bottom, my hips pressed against his ass, and for one long moment I just held position there, relishing the feeling. Not to mention the view of Owen splayed out beneath me, gasping and sweating not a little himself. One of his hands wrapped around his cock, stroking with a slow, steady pace.
Owen rolled his hips, bucking against me in clear demand that I start moving. I hardly needed to be told twice, and pulled back, slow and gentle, before driving myself back down to the root. Then again. And again. Faster and faster I thrust into him, using my whole length every time for maximum impact. Owen had to brace his hands against the FitPro to keep from being fucked right off the bench, so I took up the slack and grabbed his cock, stroking in time with my thrusts. Each squeeze wrung another drop of precum out of the tip, which just made it all the easier.
I leaned forward, using my shoulders to push his legs back, arching his spine and raising his ass off the bench. That was the goal, of course, making it possible to slam down into him even harder with gravity’s aid. I angled my entry carefully, making sure to nail his sweet spot with every thrust–and between the sounds he was making and the amount of precum all but pouring over my hand, I was fairly confident I was hitting the mark.
I couldn’t keep that up for long, and I soon eased back, shifting from the frenetic pounding to slow, deep thrusts that had us both groaning with every push of my hips. Sweat coated us both, our chests heaving, and if anything the heat inside him was only increasing. For that matter, so was the grip his inner muscles had on my cock–which made a neat correlation to the pressure building in my balls. A few more minutes, and this could all come to a very satisfying conclusion.
Owen, it transpired, had other ideas.
Sliding his legs off my shoulders, he wrapped them around my waist. A sharp flex of those chiseled abs of his and he was twining his arms around my neck, pulling himself upright in my lap. I instinctively slid my hands beneath his thighs and ass, helping to steady him. Planting his feet on the padded bench, he grinned down at me and started to move, rising and falling, fucking himself on me with brutal intensity. I’d had to let go of his cock, but his new position had it squeezed between my stomach and his, grinding against me. It left a damp trail up and down my torso with every bounce, building a slick layer that soon had his cock gliding up and down between us as easily as mine did inside him.
This was not improving the roiling pressure in my balls. Every rise and fall of Owen’s body was ratcheting me up another step towards the peak, and he was still somehow accelerating. The way the warmth of his body radiated all over me, his hot breath panting in my ear as he fucked himself on me, the slick heat of his ass gripping me even as he slid up and down…yeah, no. No way was I going to last.
“Owen,” I gasped. “I’m close.” I’d intended it as a warning, so that he could decide if he wanted my load inside him or what…but he apparently took it as a challenge, because his ass squeezed me tighter than ever as he started pounding his ass onto my cock even harder. Letting go of his ass with one hand, I slipped it into the slick oven the narrow space between us had become, and wrapped it around his cock. He groaned, head lolling back, those lovely green eyes half-lidded in pleasure as he fucked my hand while he fucked himself.
It was too much. That sound, that singular tableau of a man surrendering to ecstasy, pushed me over the edge. I could only manage a wordless, desperate sound as my orgasm slammed into me. I felt my balls contract, my cock erupting into Owen’s ass, but it was a distant, inconsequential thing; my attention was all but consumed with the bliss overrunning my brain.
Owen didn’t stop. Maybe he couldn’t stop. Owen was still riding me with furious intensity, slamming himself onto my cock over and over even as I sprayed my load inside him. Every squeeze of his ass seemed to wring another tingling wave of pleasure out of me, every desperate thrust of his cock into the tunnel of my hand and chest kept me aloft for another second.
Finally, when the sensations were getting too intense to be borne, when my body was a hairsbreadth from giving out beneath him, Owen went rigid. With a deep, guttural sound from the back of his throat, his body shuddered as he impaled himself almost painfully on my oversensitive cock one last time. I felt something warm and sticky strike the underside of my chin, and more splatter across my chest and run over my fingers. He’d frozen in place, locked in his moment of bliss, but I kept moving for him, squeezing and stroking him to drag out his climax as he’d done to me.
Eventually, he toppled off me, and we wound up sort of halfway draped over the (now very sticky) padded bench. We sprawled for a moment, collecting ourselves and getting our breathing under control. My eyelids were actually flickering, tottering on the edge of a doze despite the brawny stranger half atop me, when something warm and wet and flexible started wandering over my skin. Forcing my eyes open, I was rewarded with the sight of Owen running his tongue methodically down my body, licking up his load from the nooks and crannies it had seeped into. Tingling little shivers went through me, raising goosebumps as he worked his way lower and lower, tongue tracing the ridges of my abs and the curve of my hip to collect every drop he could find.
I shuddered when he ran his tongue up the length of my half-deflated, hyper-sensitized cock, collecting the smeared remains of my load once he was done with his own. Owen’s mouth found its way down over my balls, dragging a gasp out of me, and then went lower still. His lips feathered across my perineum, making me squirm, and to my surprise he lifted my legs and set to work on my hole, just as I’d done to him earlier. Was he aiming to go another round? Already?
“Are you–mmm, that’s good–are you sure you should be staying even longer? I don’t want you to get in…trouble…fuuuuck!” I found it hard to speak, my words trailing into a groan as Owen’s tongue really got going on my hole. I’m a sucker for rimming, and he had me moaning and squirming almost immediately.
“Nah, it’s fine,” he grunted, hardly taking his mouth off me far enough to be understood. “I do need to get the truck back, but I feel a flat tire coming on.” His tongue dove into my hole again, and I lost the capacity to argue. Seizing my hips, he rolled me onto my stomach, draped over the bench. This provided him with even better access, and he took advantage, spreading my cheeks with his hands so his mouth could work on my ass.
When the fingertip slid inside me, I knew where this was headed. When that finger started playing with my prostate, sending jolts up my spine to bounce around my brain, I decided I was fine with it. My cock hardened back up in short order, encouraged by his free hand and occasional visits from his mouth wandering down from my hole to my balls, along my shaft, and back up. Glancing beneath the bench I was sprawled across, he was stiff as a board as well.
I groaned as a second finger joined the the first. Owen mostly withdrew his mouth, unfortunately, but the way his fingers were moving inside me, stretching me open, kept me pretty well distracted. Once he opened me up enough to get his tongue back into me alongside his fingers, things really got going. I could only clasp the bench for dear life–and grind my ass back against his mouth–as tongue and fingers together did wonderful things inside me.
The third finger entering me dragged a desperate, hungry noise from my throat that made Owen chuckle. Ignoring my semi-articulate entreaties, he took his time, tongue and lips and fingers and even teeth all conspiring to have me climbing the walls–at least I would have been, if I’d had any motor control of my legs. Mostly I just sort of writhed helplessly against his mouth.
At long last, he took me by the waist and lifted me to my feet. I could feel the heat of his body right up behind me, though only his hands were touching me. I grabbed a protruding bar on the FitPro–maybe it was for pull-ups or something, I really hadn’t been paying attention to the manual–and raised one foot onto the bench to spread my ass for him. Owen moved right in, the head of his heavy cock sliding against my hole for one tantalizing moment before he started pushing in. We both groaned as he breached the entrance, my ass opening right up for him after all the preparation.
I’d expected the same sort of frenetic passion he’d displayed in the first go-round, but apparently he’d gotten it all out of his system. Instead, Owen took his time, ever so slowly working his way inside me. He’d push in a bit, pause, pull back, push in a hair deeper, pause, over and over with maddening slowness. Several times he pulled almost all the way out so he could add more saliva. When he finally hit bottom, buried full length inside me, he just…stopped. Owen held us poised on the brink for an unbearably long moment before he moved again, thrusting slowly in and out. Still, there was no furious energy, no desperation to his motion as there had been before; his thrusts were relentlessly steady and smooth.
He seemed to know the right angle to aim for, because every thrust hit just the right spot inside me, sending stars bouncing around behind my eyes. Owen’s breath was a warm bellows against the side of my neck, his furnace-hot body clasped tightly to my back. One of his hands was on my shoulder, the other on my hip. I choked out a gasp as it slithered down to wrap around my much-neglected cock. His thumb started playing with the precum beading in the slit, smearing it over the head to ease the way as he began to languidly stroke me, his hand moving in perfect time with his thrusts.
Both fresh off an orgasm, neither of us was in a hurry, and Owen made every second drag out into what felt like an hour. No way was one flat tire going to account for how long we spent like that, him plastered to my back, his hands working my body as his cock endlessly pummeled that one perfect spot. Gradually, Owen picked up the pace, his hand and his hips moving just a little faster with each stroke. The slap of skin against skin, quiet at first, steadily built until it filled the room, broken only by the occasional cry of ecstasy one of us wrenched out of the other. My nose was filled with sweat and sex and Owen’s aftershave, all tangled together in my brain with the heat of his skin and the stretch inside me.
I was so caught up in it that it took me a second to understand what was happening when Owen’s hands shifted down beneath my ass to grip my thighs. Arms bulging, he lifted me clean off my feet and held me in the air as he thrust up into me. Panting heavily, I could only hold onto the bar for dear life, the muscles in my arms quivering as I helped support my weight. I let my head loll back, my eyes half-shut. My whole body was like a single taut wire, every thrust from Owen a strum that had me vibrating head to toe.
I’m in good shape, and Owen was clearly very strong, but nobody can hold a grown man up forever, even splitting the weight. After a while–much longer than I’d expected to stay up there–he lowered me to the floor, his cock pounding away the whole time. We wound up kneeling on the padded mats I’d laid out on the floor, my back arched and Owen pressed up behind me, his hips never stopping. His arms slid around me again, one hand wandering, exploring, while the other wrapped once more around my straining erection.
“I can’t,” he gasped in my ear. “I’m gonna–!” His relentless, steady thrusting finally shuddered to a stop as he plunged in to the hilt and groaned his release. His body quivered, once, twice, again, each coinciding with a pulse of his cock deep inside me and a squeeze of his hand around my own. A moment later, he started thrusting again, groaning into my neck with each motion. Every shuddering thrust was accompanied by a sliding, twisting stroke of my cock, smearing the precum all but pouring out of me all over the shaft as he dragged me over the edge after him.
My orgasm struck all at once, overwhelming my brain as my second load splattered the floor and ran over Owen’s fingers. Neither his hand nor his hips stopped moving until I was well and truly wrung dry, my body oversensitized to the point of pins and needles flowing in waves from everywhere he touched…which was everywhere. I peeled myself away from him, half concerned he’d try for a third round and half wanting him to, despite our obvious and mutual exhaustion.
We just sprawled there on the floor in front of the FitPro for a few minutes, getting our breathing back under control. Eventually, when I was mostly sure my mouth was capable of forming intelligible phonemes, I turned to look at him.
“Are you always this committed to customer satisfaction?”
Without opening his eyes, Owen gave me a sardonic little salute, touching two fingers to his brow. They still had my semen on them. “All part of the service.”
“Note to self,” I muttered, heaving myself to my feet and offering a hand to him. “Add an extra star to the online review.”