On Call Collection

by P D Singer

  “Good, good,” he murmured into my mouth. “That’s the way, keep doing that.” He stepped back a few inches and brought me two steps forward and two steps back. “That natural hip beat and a little feet, you’re dancing.” I tried not to make it into a task again. Some of the lyrics slid by my mind—“We bragged of things we’d never done”—and while I wouldn’t call this dancing, it wasn’t standing frozen in embarrassment or stepping on his feet, either. The song slowed again, which let me come close enough for his silk shirt to slide over my skin. The music would speed up at the end of the verse and I’d be ready for it, this time, though my erect nipples against silk nearly distracted me. The last refrain trailed off—I pulled him against my chest, wondering if we’d have kissed this passionately had we been at Shenanigans. Probably someone would have tapped my shoulder and told me to find a room, or a circle would have formed around us to watch me tip his head sideways to better thrust my tongue into his willing mouth.

  The lilting soprano coming through the speakers dragged me back to the music once again—Dante’s wicked smile said that he knew how close I’d come to throwing him on the couch. One last brush of his body against mine before he twisted my hips with the music reminded me of his earlier words, “It’s all a prelude to the horizontal tango,” but I’d keep to my feet just a little longer. Just a little. Damned little. We had to stand farther apart now if we weren’t going to touch at the groin, but where was the joy in that? Lyrics grazed my mind again—“I can feel you ‘round me”—and I meant to make that a reality.

  His arms around me kept me from tripping over random cats and the pen around his patient—he’d prevent me from going over backward. Dante steered and I followed, relaxing into the music enough that the sensuality of brushing against him overwhelmed my anxiety. Besides, it wasn’t going to be me on my back. I had plans.

  Another slow circuit around the living room brought us close to the bedroom door. “I think I need to take you to the back room now,” I whispered. “Or we’re going to end up on the floor.”

  “Let’s not scandalize the other patrons,” he murmured in return, and led me to his bed.

  The music sounded clearly in the bedroom—undressing became nearly a striptease as I peeled the pearl gray silk over his head to the slow beat. Dante brushed his bare chest against mine, still dancing, before his hands stole between us to undo first his slacks and then my jeans. Our feet weren’t moving, though our hips were. We dropped each other’s britches, struggling a little with the slim-fitting clothing. Dante solved the problem of the tight pants he’d chosen for us by stepping out of his own and then sliding to his knees in front of me. The black jeans came down and my cock was in his mouth before they’d reached my ankles.

  Maybe he kept the rhythm of the music and maybe he didn’t—my mind shut down when he wrapped those full soft lips around my shaft. Dante grabbed my ass with demanding hands, rocking my hips to his rhythm and sucking me, and somehow it was all part of the dance. I closed my eyes and rubbed my palms against his short-shorn hair, loving the scratch against my hands and the wet heat against my cock.

  One hand came between my legs to play with my balls—Dante found my sack endlessly entertaining—but it didn’t stay there, probing instead toward my ass. I could have spread my legs to let him reach more easily, but once he found my hole, I might not have been able to lead this dance where I wanted it to go.

  “Up, Dante,” I said, even though it meant taking his mouth away from my cock. He came to his feet and thrust against me, his own erection upright and trapped between our bellies with mine. I savored the slight taste of myself on his tongue as I probed his mouth again, and one buttock in each hand mirrored what he was doing to me. With each squeeze and caress, I pulled his cheeks apart, just a bit, a prelude to my plans, and he responded with massaging circles against my buttocks.

  Licking soft sweeps against his jaw and neck brought my mouth to his shoulder, where the ridge of muscle got special nibbles and sucking. He pulled away with a little cry—had I bitten too hard? He put his mouth against my neck to reply in kind. Our hips pulled apart a bit, letting our hard cocks swing against each other and giving me the room I needed to put a hand on his groin. Stopping briefly to roll his balls in my fingers, I then leaned down enough to cup my hand under his ass. With two fingers, I spread his cheeks and waited a few beats for Dante to feel the anticipation before I curled my middle finger up.

  Teasing his hole with feather-light touches made him writhe—I wanted to touch him to readiness before we ever fell on the bed, because once we landed, I had only one goal. Tickling him and then slipping into him brought the moans that were the real music of my night, and I didn’t have to say with words who’d be on top. Dante found my mouth with his again and accepted my tongue between his lips.

  Enough—I leaned over and brought us crashing to the mattress, his beautiful dark body trapped under mine.

  “I laid out what we’d need,” he growled, bucking below me. “Fuck me, Keith.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. Lube and condoms that were supposed to be on the table were not there, though—it wouldn’t be the first time one of the cats had swatted everything to the floor. I eyeballed the wrapper for punctures before tearing it open. I knelt next to him so he could roll it over me, and the lube he spread heated rapidly between my flesh and his.

  “Over.” I flipped him to his belly and used my hands to admire his thighs from my vantage point between them. “Damn, but you look good enough to fuck.” He smiled over his shoulder—turning his head made muscles ripple up and down his back. “Think I will.”

  Lying down on him put my cock between his cheeks and my chest against his back, something I savored for a moment before searching for my way in. The head of my cock pressed against his opening before he grunted and let me slip in. The warm heat of his passage enveloped my cock—the tightness held me still for a moment before I had to move, and then the only sound I wanted to hear was our bodies slapping together. I curled against him with my arms under his chest, pulling into him slowly, touching him from knees to shoulders, but then I needed to see him below me and pushed up over him, thrusting faster with my rising climax.

  Dante cried out each time I pegged him, his cock rubbing against the bedspread with every smack of my hips against his round ass. The music was still playing, swallowing any words he might have spoken, though I could hear plainly what he meant with every moan. Pulling him to his knees let me reach around to his hard, thick cock. I draped over his back and pumped him in rhythm with my own movements. My fingertips barely met around his girth, though it didn’t matter, I could feel him tighten and buck faster against me as his own orgasm gathered, squeezing my climax out and into him. Shudders wracked me, freezing my hand and hips as I pulsed into his ass—he reached underneath and helped me stroke him, not losing the pounding rhythm that brought him to a screaming orgasm.

  We fell flat against the bed, which brought my lips near his neck. I tried to plant a tiny kiss there, but could only pant, maybe because all my available oxygen had gotten used up down below. I slowly became aware that the MP3 player had cycled around to the beginning of the playlist.

  “You take my breath away,” I puffed along with the singer.

  “You take mine, too,” Dante mumbled, “partly because you’re heavy. Roll over.”

  Right. I managed to extract myself from his ass and lie next to him, where I could look into his dark brown eyes with the curly lashes that I found so fascinating. I draped my arm over his back and craned closer for a quick kiss, which was followed by his soft smile. We lay so quietly for so long that one of the cats jumped up on the bed and plopped into the small space between our legs.

  “I think we should go dancing more often,” I said, just to stave off sleep. “That was fun.”

  “It was.” Dante rolled to his back and held out his arms for me to scoot into his embrace. The aggrieved cat—Harpo—stomped around until he found another comfortable roost on o
ur thighs. “But we don’t have to go to the club unless you really want to.”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted.” I wished he’d said that earlier in the evening.

  “It was.” The pause grew rather long. “But I didn’t want it for good reasons.”

  “Why would you want to go, if not for a good time out doing something fun with me?” I wasn’t sleepy any more.

  “I got a phone call today.”

  That sounded ominous. I lay quietly, waiting to hear the rest of the story. Dante stroked my arm absently.

  “Remember I said I’d gotten crazy a while back?” I nodded. Dante had come into my office with a case of cat scratch fever and worries about his HIV status because of that craziness. I’d treated the cat scratch fever and set his mind at ease about the HIV. “He called. Said he’d be at the club tonight.”

  Maybe the craziness hadn’t ended and it wasn’t treatable. The gentle motion of his fingers on my arm had to stop, right now. I jerked my arm away and he didn’t try to stroke my chest. “So you wanted to see him?”

  Dante’s chest rose and fell with the deep breath. “No. I wanted him to see me. With you. I’m sorry, Keith. I pushed you into something I knew you didn’t want to do because….Because I wanted to show you off, I guess.”

  “Like you’d caught yourself a doctor?” I rolled over on my back, away from him. Was Dante one who’d date Dr. Toad just because of the credentials? I hadn’t thought that of him. In fact, I’d thought exactly the opposite, because he had his own set of credentials, as impressive as mine.

  “Being a doctor doesn’t show until you open your mouth, Keith,” he responded with annoyance, in sharp contrast to the sheepish tones he’d been using, and now used again. “It was more that I’d found someone good. Kind. Happy to be with me. Good-looking doesn’t hurt. But I wanted….” He rolled to his side to look at me. “I wanted to prove to him that he was a fool, and all I did was prove that I’m a fool.” Harpo objected to being moved again and marched up to flop into my armpit.

  “How’s that?” I glanced at him. “Most of the rest of that list doesn’t show until I open my mouth, either.”

  “I know. And that’s why I’m the fool. Because going to the club wouldn’t have proved anything except you were willing to go to the club.” He reached across Harpo to lay his hand on my chest, squashing a grumpy mrrp out of the cat. Dante took his hand back. Good cat. “It was the rest of the night when you showed off the good stuff, and I was there to see it, but I was the one who needed to see it.” He stroked Harpo instead of me—Harpo twitched his ears back. “I had to face it, Keith—I was trying to prove something to a selfish man who’d hurt me, hell, endangered me, with a man who’s trying to please me, who helps other people, a good man who…who hasn’t gotten up and gotten dressed yet.”

  I turned that over in my mind while he waited silently to find out how badly he’d screwed us up. “Yet. You really pushed every last one of my buttons tonight.”

  “I know.” His voice was nearly inaudible. Whatever else he was going to say got lost in the thumping and whining from the next room. “I have to check on the dog.”

  I followed him into the living room and watched him kneel next to the animal. She tried to rise to her feet, but couldn’t quite manage it. Dante propped her up and guided her to the newspaper, then the water dish, before putting her back in the pet bed. He dealt with the papers without looking at me.

  “I’ll need to watch her until she falls back to sleep.” Dante kept his eyes on her.

  “I’ll do it.” Leaving seemed too extreme, though I might do it yet, and I didn’t want to lie in his bed after finding out how I’d been manipulated and why. Sleep was out of the question now—might as well stay with the dog while I thought about what he’d said. He started to object, but I waved him off. “Go back to bed, Dante.”

  He left after turning the low lights even lower, and I sat on the floor near the injured dog. She rested her head on my lap and accepted the absent-minded stroking. Poor girl, she’d gotten hurt tonight because of people, yet she’d been patched up and would heal because of people. Small whimpers told me where not to stroke—the bruising would be with her for a while. Still, she hadn’t stopped trusting.

  Had I stopped trusting Dante? Should I? How much had I blindly trusted already? How badly had I misplaced that trust? The questions churned, but answers didn’t come.

  His words played over and over in my head. “Wanted to show you off.” “Prove he was a fool.” “Found someone good.” “I was the fool.” Eventually, another phrase he’d used floated up. “I’m sorry.” I quit moving my hand on the dog and she quit scraping her front paws. Soft doggie breaths mixed with tiny scrabbling sounds from the sugar glider’s habitat.

  “So what do you think, Mandy?” I muttered to the little nocturnal creature. She clung to the wire mesh upside down and chittered softly. I filled in the words for her. “Maybe you’re right.” The dog didn’t rouse when I slid out from under her snout, nor did the light in the fridge wake her. Mandy grabbed the slice of mango with two paws and tried to talk with her mouth full. “Okay, you’re right.”

  There was enough light to see the liquid gleam of Dante’s eyes on my way back to the bed. Slipping under the sheet with him, I turned him to spoon against my belly. Talking, no, I didn’t want to talk any more—that would be for morning. For tonight, a small kiss at the back of his neck was enough. Harpo shook the bed when he leaped back onto it and plunked into the curve of Dante’s body, followed by the softer tread of Domino pussyfooting to a comfortable spot in the crook of my knees. Dante’s breathing went from ragged to even as he finally fell asleep against me.

  We woke, festooned with more cats than we’d gone to sleep with, to the shrill of Dante’s phone playing the business ringtone. Dante hit the speaker button.

  “I’m sorry to call so early on a Saturday, Dr. James,” said the weary voice on the other end. “My husband and dog were in the crash last night.”

  “How is your husband doing?” Dante asked, his voice crisp and professional. He rolled out of the bed to check on the dog. I followed him out to the living room where he ran a hand over her head and sides, still listening.

  “He’s going to be all right. I need to tell Doctor, uh, Hoyer, too, I suppose.” The sentences were coming slowly. She had to have been up most of the night.

  “I can pass the news along, if you like.” The dog staggered to her feet and lapped from the water bowl. The splint on the front leg let her limp the few inches needed.

  “Thank you.” Long pause. “What happened to Mitzi?” I thought the dog’s name was Fido.

  “She had a broken leg and some cracked ribs. We patched her up already; she’s up and moving, but she’ll need to have wet food only for a few weeks.” Dante lifted the dog’s lip to check the color, healthy pink, as far as I could tell. “She’s doing well. You could probably take her home in a day or two.”

  “Thank you. My son will come to get her, then.”

  After a bit of critter maintenance—kibbles, glop, walkies, and a gerbil that went from the gerbil tank to the ball python’s, all accomplished in near silence—Dante and I sat on the couch to drink some coffee. It was one of those “made for conversation” moments, though he looked apprehensive over what he might hear. He probably wasn’t expecting what I did say.

  “So, are we going to dance again tonight?” I asked, playing my hand over the back of his neck.

  “I thought you didn’t want to go to the club.” He set the cup down. The liquid splashed almost over the rim, though it was half empty.

  “I didn’t say that. Maybe in a few weeks, after you’ve coached me some more, we’ll go to the club.” I refreshed our cups. “But I liked dancing last night—I want to do it again.”

  “Okay.” He looked puzzled, like I shouldn’t be changing my mind from one day to the next. Or like he missed hearing the words that lay between the words. Or did hear them but didn’t believe them. “Even if
he might be there?”

  “Even if. But when we do go, Dante James—” I leaned over to claim his mouth. “You don’t dance with anybody but me.”

  On Call: Family

  Unpleasant twitters made me open one eye. Today was Sunday, and if it was still morning, it was too early. Dante and I may not have stayed up terribly late Saturday night, but we’d exhausted each other pretty thoroughly.

  “I’m going to have to go to church with my family this week, Keith.” Dante rolled over to slap the alarm clock silent. “My cousin’s baby is getting christened. I need to be there.”

  “What do you want me to do? I’ll stay home, if you want.” After a couple of months together, we’d fallen into the habit of going to services at a gay-friendly church up in Boulder, an extremely liberal college town about twelve minutes up the road. Neither some hand holding nor the color contrast of the hands raised a single eyebrow there.

  Dante’s family lived about thirty minutes the other direction, in Denver. I’d met them for dinner, a rather tense affair, but polite. His parents weren’t entirely reconciled to Dante’s sexuality, and they sure weren’t reconciled to me. We hadn’t tested them further. His sisters Ellen and Shanya had been cordial, which was a relief.

  “I’d like you to come. Keith, we’re going to have to actually be seen together if they’re going to accept us being together.” He sat next to me on the side of the bed, running his hand through my short, light brown hair.

  “Am I going to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb?” His family was one thing—his community another, and I didn’t want to make trouble for him.

  “Not really. Park Hill is a well-integrated neighborhood, and the congregation is, too. You won’t be the lone paleface.” He tugged me to sitting and wrapped his arms around me.