“What?”
I slid onto the head of his cock. It was extremely awkward. I grunted as I lined myself up. Mark helped me. He felt for the lube leaking out of my ass.
“Don’t touch it,” I said. I slid my sphincter past the head of his cock. That was the hard part. The rest should go smoothly.
“You did what? You used that dildo?” He groaned and rubbed my back as I slid down his cock. “How the fuck... you realize I put that in my ass, right?”
Why are you talking when we’re having sex?
“I put a condom on it first.”
“Wha-a-a—” he stuttered as he laughed.
I was impaled. His laughter and that smiling face made everything feel better, even though my ass was kind of burning. Maybe I didn’t use as much lube as I should have.
“Of course you would put a condom on a dildo...”
I bit into his neck to shut him up.
“No hickies!” he cried.
“You’re mine,” I growled. I sank all the way down and held him with my body. We made out. My hands felt his muscles and his back and his hair.
“Are you going to do it, babe?”
I slowly eased my way off his cock.
“That’s it,” Mark sighed. He lifted up and fucked me while I hovered over him. I sank back down on him and told him to stop. “Sorry.”
I squeezed my ass around his dick, tightening the muscles in my butt. Mark moaned. “You can feel that?” I asked, curious.
“Oh yeah! God yes. I can feel that.”
“Don’t move. I want to squeeze and climb off. But if you fuck me, I think it will hurt.”
“Okay. Okay. Okay.” Mark was panting. “God you feel so good, dammit, babe. Do it!” He called me a ‘sexy fucker’ and all sorts of other names as I moved. I was tentative. It hurt to slide off of him. I felt his cock pop out of my ass... it literally made a wet pop sound.
I was panting. Back down. I needed to stay focused. This isn’t sex. This is just like Survivor. I’m making an alliance. My ass is making an alliance with Mark’s cock. That’s all this is. This is a game.
I slid down his cock, this time not squeezing and trying to avoid the pain while finding the most pleasure. My eyes were closed.
Alliance. His cock, my ass. Alliance. Alliance.
Mark’s body slid sideways so he was lying on the couch. He had been upright. This new position felt more comfortable for me.
I was very slow and deliberate with my strokes. My eyes were closed and my face contorted in a grimace. Mark occasionally fucked up into me as I pulled away.
“Babe...” he touched my chest. “What are you thinking about? Open your eyes.”
Alliance. Butt, cock. Alliance. Need to do this. Need this. Make him happy. Alliance.
Mark stopped my slow movements. “Chris. Open your eyes. How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“What are you thinking about?”
Should I ignore you again? Fuck, I’m doing the thing... why don’t you just let me do it in peace?
“Survivor,” I said. Since you’re so interested.
“What?”
I slid onto his cock and pinned him under my body. I arched my back and looked at him through half-closed eyes. “I’m thinking about how my ass is making an alliance with your cock... like in Survivor.”
“Noo-o-oo-o-oo,” he wailed. He laid back and laughed. I could feel each jiggle in his body through his cock. I rode him calmly until he relaxed. “Fu-u-uck... I knew I shouldn’t have asked.” He wiped the tears from his eyes.
I squeezed all my pooping muscles and dug my fingers into his chest. Don’t make fun of me. I lifted off his body while holding onto his cock with my ass. I’ll show you.
“Oh shit!” He grunted as he quickly shot several volleys into my ass. I rode him until he stopped squirming.
Conquered.
I was proud to have done it.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “Fuck, babe. You’ve got me so trigger-happy. It snuck up on me. Fuck, you’re so tight.”
I slid off him.
“Get off, babe,” he encouraged. “Come on, lay on me. Touch me. What do you need? Give me that load. Stick it in my mouth. Get off with me.”
Ew.
I lay next to him so I was half on him and my cock was in the v-line above his pelvis.
“Ride me, dude. You looked so fucking hot.” He kissed my face and tried to encourage me with his hands. I eventually was able to release. I thought of Mark’s laugh and that surprised smile from when he orgasmed. And I thought about his calming voice and his touches and his kisses.
I calmed down and cuddled into the space between his broad body and the couch.
“Now that’s an alliance,” Mark said with a grin.
“Shut up.”
“You are one weird little fucker.”
“Shut up,” I shoved him off the couch. He offered very little resistance. I suspected that he rolled with my shove just to be silly.
He poked his head up over the couch cushion. “Are you going to lick the cum off my body?”
“That’s my cum!” I cried, disgusted.
He licked some off his fingers. “Now that we’ve got you on the grapefruit diet, it’s mighty tasty.” He held a finger out to me. I squealed and tried to get swallowed by the couch cushions, but to no avail.
“I love my little fucker,” Mark said. He grabbed me and picked me up like I weighed nothing.
We showered playfully. He tickled me. We both complained about the hickies on our bodies. We cleaned up the leather couch (and I now understood why it was a leather couch). We watched the rest of the Cubs’ game—naked. We made dinner and settled in for the start of Survivor.
“You want to eat off my body?” Mark asked, unexpectedly.
“Why?”
“You did something new for me. Let me do this for you.” He lay on the ottoman where we normally set our feet. I debated for a minute.
His body is on a germy surface.
Then he jumped to his feet and didn’t tell me where he was going. A moment later he returned with a box of wet wipes.
“I don’t need those,” I said. He wiped the ottoman and asked me if I wanted to wipe his chest or back. “No. My dad never let me keep wet wipes in the house. He said I didn’t need them.”
“Well you can have them here. As many as you want. Now put that food on my body and dig in, ya filthy animal.”
“You’re such a dunce.”
He made a goofy face. I ate my dinner off his body without using my hands... like I was a wild dog and he was a succulent hunk of ham. He’s a hunk, alright. I bit his chest and licked the dressing off his pecs. Yummy. I smiled like a lunatic and saw the same mood reflected in the eyes of my lover.
When I’m with Mark, it feels okay to act silly. Sometimes.
Claude and Marty
Mark and I had to skip watching the next episode of Survivor because Mark was on an assignment in LA that lasted until Tuesday night. His flight back to Chicago was for Wednesday morning. If he hadn't been in a relationship with me, Mark would have booked a flight Wednesday afternoon or even delayed his return by a couple days, but he chose the earliest reasonable flight and I was there waiting for him at the airport.
Mark held my limp hand as we waited at the luggage carousel. That tepid hand-holding was the most expressive I could be in such a public environment. I felt exposed, stiff. I didn’t like public displays of affection. Mark loved them... so I let him hold my hand.
There were some exceptions for certain PDA’s... like when I was overwhelmed with emotion. For example, I would be mushy and allow public kisses if Mark was leaving for a long trip. Mark sometimes initiated affectionate kisses and touches when we were out in the park or driving around in the country. Kisses in the country were acceptable, but I was still uncomfortable.
If I we couldn’t make it to the bedroom, then I’d rather keep it indoors. If our front door wasn’t shut, then there was a chanc
e someone could see us. I hated being seen, observed.
I would have been reluctant to engage in public affections with a woman, too. I dated a woman after Mark, back when it seemed like Mark and I were irreparably separated. I probably would have married her.
Thinking of that rebound relationship fills me with melancholy. If I had settled down with her... how different would this memoir be? Mark was and is the love of my life. We burned so brightly when we were together, especially in those first few months. We clicked, we laughed, we fit together easily. Both of us made so many adjustments and sacrifices to be with the other... but they were easy to make.
It was the purest love I have ever known.
And I almost lost it—Mark was almost gone forever.
Dear Reader, you might be wondering why I don’t focus more details on the Chicago atmosphere or on the buildings we enter or the things we do in our city life. The truth is: I don’t care about Chicago. I never enjoyed living in the city. The only good thing about Chicago is that it brought me and Mark together. Mark is the one thing in this world that I love enough to write a million words about... he is the one I am obsessive about recording. I want you to love him as much as I do. I want you to see him how I see him. Yes, he has flaws and, yes, I put my blinders on when looking at those flaws... but I feel compelled to immortalize our story—his story.
Authors generally give the advice that you should write about what you know. I know Mark. I know how we fit together. I need (compulsively) to record him. I want a small part of him to exist after we are gone (and a better part of him than those stupid modeling pictures).
It is my hope that some time from now... whether a hundred years or five years... someone will discover our story and fall in love with Mark as I fell in love with him. It feels silly for me to write that egotistical statement, but it’s true. All my novels now have Mark woven into their fabric. Every love interest—be they male or female or robot or bacteria—they all have some kernel of Mark in them.
After we broke up (and he said such nasty things to me), all my romances turned to tragic murder mysteries. I killed every character that reminded me of Mark. My heart was so bruised that I might never have been able to write another pure romance. My compulsions seemed to demand that I burn the fictional romances to the ground and take no prisoners.
I barely wrote during our separation... and those months turned into my Horror Phase.
This memoir would not have been written as a romance if I didn’t get a second chance with Mark. It would have been a horror story. It would have been a cautionary tale: Do not do what I did. Do not fall in love so deeply.
But Mark and I did get a second chance. Two books from now I’ll write more about how devastated I was by our ‘divorce’... because that’s exactly what it felt like—a sudden, unexpected, painful divorce. I’ll give you ample warning time to stop reading before we reach that point. You can safely read to the end of this installment of It’s Just Us Here without fear of another hint of our future separation. On the events of the next book (The Stud), however... I will say this: our painful separation immediately followed a huge milestone in my relationship with Mark.
I was feeling so proud, so connected, and so fond of him... then it fell apart in a matter of minutes.
In hindsight, I was strangling him with my love. He was pulling away and I didn’t want to admit it—I didn’t want him to be ready to move on. He gave me so much confidence. He was my refuge from my dark thoughts. I couldn’t believe that he didn’t feel the same about me. So I grabbed onto him as tightly as I could, even as he tried to slip away.
It was a disaster.
I don’t know why I’m writing about this here, before starting the memory of our first dinner with Claude and Marty. Sometimes the devastating memory of our Big Fight pops into my head unexpectedly (especially now that I am assembling the final draft of my romance with Mark).
Mark won’t like to read my side of the Big Fight. It is a painful truth—one I can never completely put to bed. Our current relationship has that deep scar running through it. The Big Fight is painful to think about, but every time it creeps into my mind I am overwhelmed by gratitude instead of immeasurable sadness. I know Mark will never leave me again... I just, know it. There is nothing for me to worry about on that front. Our communication is much better than what we had in those early days. Sure, I thought I was good at communicating back then... but neither of us understood what it truly took to make our relationship last.
We do now. And that knowledge overwhelms me... our second chance to make it right overwhelms me. I am crying right now as I type this. I’m watching Mark play with our son out in the yard. Baseball, of course. I personally pushed for tennis and have forbidden football. But we’re stuck with boring baseball. Oh well.
Anyway... back to Claude and Marty. Why did I start talking about our Big Fight if it is still two months away? I guess I do know why that memory crept into the picture today... because when I sat down to type, I was not thinking so much about our painful separation but about what we needed to fuel our reunification. Our second chance took an incredible amount of effort, willpower and forgiveness.
Claude and Marty taught us about how to be a real couple. I didn’t pick up any of those important lessons when Mark and I were together the first time, but when Mark and I got our second chance... everything might have blown up again (painfully) if not for the lessons that we learned from Claude and Marty. So it is important that you, Dear Reader, understand who these two guys are and what they meant to Mark.
What they mean to us.
MARTY’S REAL NAME WAS Arthur, and he was a bottom. He wanted Mark to fuck him—he fantasized about it. He lusted over my lover. That was as plain to see as anything I have ever seen. I had observed the glances that Marty gave Mark when we danced in the club. At the time, I thought those looks were simply a product of the environment, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Marty was like that all the time. And Claude accepted him. Claude was the constant, calming half of their pairing. Claude did not get upset easily or show much emotion of any kind.
Marty could not keep his eyes off Mark and he often ran around like a chicken with its head cut off that’s also trying to get the head of another chicken shoved up its ass.
Mark had accepted a dinner invitation from his ‘gay dads’ and set it for Wednesday night—the night he got back from his extended modeling assignment. We taped Survivor and I was determined to make a good impression on the two people so important to Mark.
Mark had previously explained to me how Marty and Claude had adopted him when he was new to Chicago life and the gay scene. If not for them, Mark might have become a statistic.
Mark was a reckless youth, and his looks meant that he was highly sought after when he entered a club. Mark needed some adult guidance—and he accepted it from the peach-like man and the plum-like man who followed him like fairy godparents.
Mark had always been drawn to older friends. His group of friends in college were all older than him. That’s why his final year of his undergraduate studies were so wild and unproductive—Tim, Ryan, Stacy and Amber were all gone. All that was left was Marty and Claude. If not for those two men, Mark might have flunked out of school in the fall semester and the dunce wouldn’t have even cared. Mark was already a successful model at that time and had mastered the skill of using his looks (and body) to get preferential treatment from his professors.
I have no idea how he survived that last year of college. I have no idea how he survived the two years after college when he was basically on his own and jet-setting around the world to shoot advertisement campaigns.
Claude and Marty were there through it all—just as they were going to be ‘there’ through my involvement in Mark’s life.
Claude had a beautiful kitchen. I was informed—numerous times by Marty—that the kitchen was Claude’s. The food he prepared for us was stellar. It was a roasted chicken with incredible, fresh vegetabl
es. He had also made a delicate dessert—something Mark could eat without fearing the calories.
I enjoyed talking to the two men. They were a lot of fun and had so many salacious stories about Mark—most of which were shocking to me. It was readily apparent that Mark had sheltered me from the worst of the gossip about his exploits. He had threatened Tim and Ryan to stay silent about his past, and for the most part they had obeyed. I wasn’t great friends with Stacy yet, so we didn’t spend much time together, which meant I didn’t hear her side of these stories (and she never held back).
Either Claude and Marty had not been given the ultimatum, or they simply could not be contained.
I heard about orgies. I heard about crazy parties without orgies. I heard about Mark’s life in LA (which I had never asked about before). I heard about Mark’s rules of the conquest. (He had apparently repeated bragged to Claude and Marty about how many days/hours he thought it would take to bed his newest target.)
“Did you tell them how long it would take to get me?” I asked.
“Not at first. I told them after I had already failed that first week. Didn’t I?”
“Oh, you should have seen him—” Marty touched my hand. “—he was such a confused mess, wasn’t he, Claude?”
“We talked about it for weeks and weeks,” Claude confirmed. “It got so bad that we were getting status updates through text message.”
“Were not,” Mark said sourly. The guys laughed.
“He had it bad for you,” Marty assured me. “I asked him how you two met, and Marky wasn’t sure. He said it felt like you appeared one day in his apartment... and then you wouldn’t leave.”
“That’s not what happened,” I said. Mark gave me a look which said: That’s exactly how it happened. “Well, I did kind of plant myself in your apartment that first day, didn’t I?”
“You did. I didn’t mind.”
“Thank you for not kicking me out.”
“Kicking you out?” Marty exclaimed. “He wanted to draw you into the bedroom. How many times did you try and fail?”
“All of them,” Mark said pleasantly. He wiped his mouth with the napkin.
The Lover (It's Just Us Here Book 4) Page 17