by A. M. Riley
Joshua was breathing hard, hands resting lightly on Freddie’s shoulders, his whole body shaking. Freddie pushed the shirt back from Joshua’s shoulders, helped Joshua remove it, kissed his wrists, his arms, came back to his mouth, and kissed him deeply, tongue pressing into Joshua’s mouth as his hand wandered and found Joshua’s belt buckle and slipped it open.
Joshua made a noise, and his fingers tightened on Freddie’s arm.
“Joshua?” said Freddie. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing. Don’t stop,” breathed Freddie.
Slipping down the zipper, Freddie found the wet, hard lump in Joshua’s briefs and kneaded it gently, the man arching and shaking beneath him. Freddie crawled up so that he lay almost fully on Joshua, reaching down to open his own pants and release his throbbing cock. Joshua lay there looking up at him, his eyes wide as a startled deer’s.
“Joshua, is what I’m doing making you feel bad?”
“I don’t…” Joshua breathed in and out. “I’m sorry…”
“You don’t want to?” Freddie swallowed hard, closed his eyes, and concentrated on controlling himself. “It’s okay, Joshua. I understand…”
“No,” said Joshua fiercely. “No, I want to.”
In two weeks, Freddie had learned that one had to wait very patiently sometimes for Joshua to find the words. He wasn’t feeling terribly patient at the moment, but he tried.
Joshua’s eyes searched Freddie’s face. He breathed, and his hand touched Freddie’s chest, traveled over it, traveled down and then up again. “I don’t know anything,” he said finally.
“But…you said you had a boyfriend. I thought…”
“I’m not any good at it. He…he said I wasn’t.”
Rage at this mysterious he and compassion for Joshua’s hurt warred with Freddie’s lust. “There aren’t any good or bad ways to touch each other, Joshua. It’s just nice, isn’t it?”
Joshua’s eyes were filled with some bitter memory. “I want to make you feel good.”
“I feel good right now, Joshua. Just lying here with you.”
Joshua’s chest rose and fell as he breathed hard with whatever emotion he was feeling. Freddie found his hand drawn to the planes of white skin and lean muscle, his palm floating down to the soft little belly, the trail of hair. Joshua’s jeans opened to the white briefs, his cock still a mound with a growing damp spot. After two weeks of restless sleep and erotic daydreams and frustratingly chaste hugs and cuddles, Freddie thought he was about a step from madness.
“I’ll teach you,” he said. The arrogance of it would make him cringe in the morning, but at the time it seemed the shortest way between point A and the point where he longed to be.
“I’ll teach you to make me feel good, Joshua. And you teach me how to make you feel good. Okay?”
That solemn expression was not exactly the one a lover longs to see, but Joshua nodded his head.
Freddie swallowed. “All right. Let me help you take off your pants.” Joshua lifted his hips and helped Freddie slide the denim down his long legs. Freddie pulled his own slacks off a little wildly, bunching them and kicking them somewhere onto the floor. “Now give me your hand.”
He pressed Joshua’s palm around his cock, wrapped the fingers tightly around it, and had to breathe for a minute. He slid the white briefs down, and a lovely thick cock, dark with blood, lifted its head above Joshua’s silky black pubic hairs.
“Oh,” moaned Freddie. He wrapped his fingers around it and let its weight rest there. God, he wanted to taste it.
“We need a condom.” God willing, they’d need more than one.
“There’s some in my duffel bag,” said Joshua, his voice a whisper. And then Freddie had to kiss him again, legs brushing against legs.
Joshua’s grip tightened, and Freddie gasped and said, “Not yet. Let me…”
He slid off the bed and threw things around from the duffel bag until he found the box of condoms and brought a handful of foil wrappers back to the bed.
Joshua’s skin was flushed from his pelvis to his cheeks, and he was holding his own penis, leg moving restlessly, breathing through his mouth.
He muttered something unintelligible when Freddie slid the condom on, and when Freddie wrapped his lips around Joshua’s cock and sucked once, hard, Joshua arched and moaned, and his balls drew up. Freddie gripped the base of Joshua’s cock and heard him gasp.
“Do you want to come, Joshua?” whispered Freddie. “I can make you come now, and then we can take our time later.”
Joshua flailed a bit, thrashed. He looked down at Freddie and said, “What do you want me to do?”
Oh, man. Freddie had to close his eyes and think of Brussels sprouts just a second to keep from shooting all over the quilt. “Hold still,” he whispered. “Hold very, very still.”
The feeling of Joshua straining not to move while Freddie’s mouth sealed over the tip of his cock and slid down was amazing. The choked moan and tremble of his thighs when his cock swelled over and over in Freddie’s mouth was heady.
Freddie slid up Joshua’s shocked body and kissed him, peeling the condom from his penis. His own cock was heavy and hard against Joshua’s belly, and Joshua looked up at him and said, “Can I suck you?”
One of the blessings of middle age is some semblance of staying power. Freddie got the condom on and lay back, while Joshua positioned himself between Freddie’s open legs.
Joshua looked up at him. “What do you like?”
Freddie’s head fell back, and he thought of Brussels sprouts again. “I like my balls sucked.”
Joshua’s head moved down, and Freddie tried to think about anything but the feeling of that silky head, the warm mouth drawing in his nuts and rolling them. He heard an embarrassing whimper come out of his own mouth, and he said, teeth gritted, “Joshua? Suck me. Just the head. Hard. Now. Please.”
And Joshua popped up and caught the head of Freddie’s penis and sucked on it so hard Freddie thought it would come off. A bright flash went off in his skull, and Joshua kept his mouth around Freddie, soft and gentle, until he’d finished coming.
Joshua crawled up Freddie’s body with the look of a young man who was eager to know his grades, and Freddie managed a dopey smile and to stroke the smooth hair back from Joshua’s face before he dozed off.
* * * *
Brian came into the house looking for a screwdriver Paul thought he’d left in the living room. He noticed that Joshua and Freddie weren’t on the front porch anymore, and when he left, he saw that the door to Scott’s bedroom was closed.
“What are you grinnin’ about?” snarled Scott. He was drilling holes in two-by-fours with a sour expression. Home improvement was not Scott’s favorite afternoon activity.
“I’m just in a good mood,” said Brian. “What did you want me to screw, Daddy?”
Chapter Twenty
“The cab is here, Brian. Are you ready?” Jim stood at the open door wearing a good suit and looking worriedly at his seldom worn watch.
Brian came trotting out of the bedroom in a pair of black dress pants and starched white cotton shirt. “I want to wear a bowtie.”
Jim rolled his eyes. “This is LA, honey. Not the Met. No one dresses for the opera out here.”
Brian raised an eyebrow at Jim, who had trimmed his beard neatly and wore his hair braided down his back, in addition to the suit.
“I want to,” said Brian.
“Put it on in the cab, then,” said Jim, who had to be half an hour early for everything.
Paul came through the living room, spun Brian around, gave him a kiss and a swat on the fanny, and told him to do as Jim said.
“What are you going to do all night, Paul?” asked Jim, watching the tall handsome young man their Brian had become as he trotted down the sidewalk toward the cab.
“Going to break in the hot tub,” said Paul.
“Good idea,” said Jim. “Get Scott to join you. He pulled a muscle trying to ride that horse that Joshua uses,
and he’s had me at my wits end all day with his whining.”
“Will do.” Paul trotted over and gave Jim a kiss for good measure. “Have a good time.”
* * * *
It was an interesting experiment, Scott thought. He sat on the lip of a bench in the hot tub and watched his dildos floating in the water in front of him.
Some floated; some didn’t. He had no idea why.
“That can’t be a good idea,” said Paul, stepping slowly into the hot churning water from up on the wooden deck they’d built around it.
Jim and Paul had insisted the hot tub be enclosed in a gazebo with privacy walls. At the time, Scott had bitched endlessly, as it required another couple of days of labor to build the additional walls. But now, looking up at the naked, inked body descending into the tub beside him, he was very grateful that he didn’t have to worry about the neighbors.
Paul groaned, sinking into the water. “The plastic in those things is probably not meant to withstand these temperatures,” he said.
“If they can handle my hot ass, they can handle a hot tub,” said Scott.
Paul snorted. “Take them out, Scott.”
Scott sank up to his chin in the hot water and considered refusing a direct order. There was something to be said for a six-feet-four naked man with a semi throwing one leg across his inked thighs.
But his quad muscles still ached from horseback riding, and Paul looked to be in such utter bliss over there, Scott hadn’t the heart to be a brat tonight.
“Yes, Paul.”
He scooped out the collection and stood to throw them onto the towel he’d left lying on the deck. When he turned around, he noticed one of Paul’s eyes half-open and watching him.
Scott went up on his toes and leaned over, so that his butt cheeks hovered just above the swirling waters. “Like what you see?”
“Who wouldn’t?” said Paul like it was no big deal.
So then, of course, Scott had to stretch toward his towel, keeping his butt out of the water and clenching a little as he did so. “Oh, darn it, I can’t reach.”
There came a sploosh in the tub behind him, and a big body pressed him right into the wall of the tub as Paul reached over his head and scooped up the towel.
“Here.”
Never call a toppy top’s bluff, Scott reminded himself. Now that he had Paul there—very much there—he wasn’t sure whether he had meant what he had just offered.
Scott and Paul had one of those relationships by degrees. Mostly, they interacted in groups with Jim or Brian or Jim and Brian. About six months ago, though, something subtle had begun changing between them. Scott had been very aware that he was flirting. And, a little like waving one’s hand over a candle flame, he was both fascinated by and cautious of the heat.
“Aren’t you going to take it?” said Paul, still holding the towel.
Yes, that was the question, wasn’t it?
“I could…” Scott pushed back from the lip of the hot tub and was aware of Paul allowing him freedom of motion without lessening his contact.
The towel was placed, very carefully, down in front of Scott and two hands placed just below his armpits. Those hands traveled, very slowly, down his sides, the fingers mapping every inch of skin in their passage.
Warm lips at his ear. “Don’t you need it?”
Scott turned. Now he was nipple ring to nipple ring, so to speak, with Paul. The heat of the tub water kept them both from full erection, but the pressure of their pelvises sent tingles through him.
The water churned around them, the lights of the gazebo creating green and black shadows in the ridges and dips of Paul’s sculpted body. The snakes inked there seemed almost to rise from the water like some sort of mythic creature, and the eyes looking down at Scott were so dark blue as to be almost black.
Feeling pretty close to that flame, Scott bent forward and kissed the middle of Paul’s neck, one tiny inch of uninked skin. He pushed a little, experimentally, and felt Paul give again, as if they were dancing. Paul’s arms held Scott close but allowed him to lead.
“’S getting hot,” said Scott softly. “Isn’t it?”
Holding Scott by one shoulder so that he turned as Paul turned, Paul leaned over and pushed something on the hot tub’s control panel. “The water will cool down to room temperature soon,” said Paul. He laid one finger at Scott’s hairline and traced it softly to the top of Scott’s ear.
“Thank you.”
Scott let his hands play over Paul’s biceps, down the ripped abdomen to Paul’s waist, where the water foamed, then dipped his fingers below the water line. He felt Paul’s thighs bunch, his torso stir just slightly.
Scott looked up at Paul through his eyelashes and saw just a flash from those eyes before Paul’s mouth was on Scott’s and they were both swaying there, arms around each other, fully engaged in the kiss.
As the water cooled, Paul hardened against Scott, and he found that he was edging the man to one of the fiberglass seats, urging Paul down. Scott placed a knee on either side of Paul’s hips and reached back to guide Paul’s stiff cock to Scott’s entrance.
It was gratifying to see that Paul was breathing hard, his lips open and moist, his face and chest flushed. Scott felt less endangered and more protected by the arms that encircled him, pulling Scott down onto that long prick as strong hips shoved upward, hitting Scott deep and hard.
The water made him buoyant. Scott let Paul guide his hips up and down, watching as Paul’s face went red, jaw clenched with the effort. He kissed the bald head, forehead, face, lips, gasping when Paul’s hand suddenly grasped his penis and started stroking long, firm strokes.
He was glad for the sound of the jets. They, hopefully, masked his moans as he came.
And afterward they floated, arms twined together, legs lifting with the swells of whirlpooling water.
“You know, ’s gonna get pretty funky in here if we come in the water all the time,” said Scott, smiling against Paul’s mouth.
“That’s what the filtration system is for,” said Paul.
“You get the big family pack kind?”
Paul grinned. “Guess I should.”
“Guess you’d better, snake man.”
Chapter Twenty-One
It was a vignette Brian had become accustomed to seeing. An upset Joshua pounding his heels as he walked across the house, down the hallway, into the room he borrowed from Scott followed by the thunder of the slammed door reverberating through the house.
And then Scott, sauntering in, eyes blinky and innocent, practically whistling. “Where’s Joshua?”
“If Jim finds out you’ve been teasing him again, he’s not going to be happy,” said Brian.
“I’m not teasing him. It bothers me, is all.”
Scott had a problem with overly submissive behavior. Or, rather, he worried that the men one submitted to might take advantage. Brian thought that Jim must be the most patient man in the world.
“What’s he done now?”
“Nothing. I mean, nothing. Freddie told him to rest, so he was just sitting there, refusing to move.”
“Joshua had that bad cold,” Brian pointed out. “I think it scared Freddie. Jim thought it might be pneumonia the one night, remember?”
“What’s the point of being sick if you can’t have a sick day,” fussed Scott. “It’s just wrong, is what it is.”
“Well, he’s moved now. He looked really upset when he came through here.”
Scott looked worried. “I’d better talk to him.”
Brian sighed, shaking his head. He’d been polishing boots, and he put the boot and the polishing rag down. “I think you should just let it rest, Scott. Joshua is high strung.”
“You know what really pisses me off?”
Brian picked up another boot and applied a glob of polish to it. “No.”
“They’re still not doing it.”
“Sure they are. I saw them kissing the other day.”
“Maybe that, but not the re
al deal.”
Brian paused in his polishing and turned to stare at Scott. “You don’t have a spycam in your bedroom, do you?”
“No. God, Brian. Joshua told me. Or, actually he asked me about it, and I could tell from the questions.”
Paul had spoken to Brian about gossip. More than once. Brian had been getting quite a taste for it in New York, and it was starting to become a bad habit. The problem was, what seemed like gossip to Paul always seemed like normal human inquiry to Brian.
“What kind of questions?” he asked.
“Oh, like, was it really sex if a man didn’t you know, and did men still like men if those men had never, you know, and was there something that let other men know that one had never…”
“You’re kidding.”
Scott raised a hand in solemn Boy Scout mode. “No.”
“You think it’s Freddie?” said Brian. “Maybe he’s not into you know.”
Scott cracked a grin. “A top that doesn’t top.”
Brian giggled. He and Scott looked at each other. In unison they said, “You know,” and both fell onto the sofa laughing.
Wiping tears from the corners of his eye, Brian said. “I asked Paul about it, and he was all, ‘the tradition of the mentoring relationship in Greek culture.’ Gah. I know what Greek means to me.”
“Toga?” said Scott.
“Toga,” said Brian. “Which gives me a great idea.”
* * * *
“Did you actually ever try to peel a grape?” said Scott testily. He shook the mangled remains of another purple grape from his fingers.
“I think we’re supposed to feed them whole from the bunch.” Brian leaned over, holding the grapes over Scott’s head. “Jump, puppy.”
“Watch it. I’ll bite you,” said Scott. “Joshua! What are you doing in there?”
From behind the bedroom door came Joshua’s voice. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Both Scott and Brian walked over to said closed door. “What’s the problem?” called Scott.
“I don’t think Freddie would like this.”