Heart Knot Mine

by Lily Velden

  With those words he reached out and cupped my package, squeezing gently. He leaned in and bit the lobe of my ear. “I really will make you come longer and harder than you ever have before.”

  My cock lurched in his hand.

  He chuckled knowingly. “I’ll see you real soon, sweetheart.”

  7

  PART OF me cursed Robert and the Pandora’s box he’d unknowingly opened in me, for just like Pandora, now that it was unbolted I found it impossible to close. I wanted to hate him for unleashing such disturbing desires in me.

  Thank God for teaching—I’d always enjoyed it. Everything about it—the lectures, the classes, even grading the essays—but now I longed for it. It was the only time I was free of the unsettling thoughts and images of Robert in his home movies and my experience at the bathhouse. It was the only time I wasn’t looking at men and picturing them naked or having sex.

  Of course, my internal cursing of the man didn’t keep me from racing back to my office to check my e-mails and Skype every chance I got.

  My old question was back to haunt me: What the hell is wrong with me? Though nowadays, its slant was somewhat different.

  Now I had color in my life. Oh yes, I had color all right. Full spectrum, Technicolor, bright as bright can be color. Only problem was, it seemed to be inspired by cock. Not an outcome I’d envisaged when I’d first begun asking myself that question.

  There had to be a reason for my cravings. Was I having a midlife crisis early? A mental breakdown? Was there something in the drinking water in merry old England? Was Robert’s home suffused with gay pheromones?

  My problem wasn’t with homosexuality, per se. Throughout history in my beloved arts, be it music, painting, writing, or in the theater, there was an abundance of homosexuality. Hell, some of my own idols in the art world were either known or at least suspected of being gay: Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Jean Cocteau, Mapplethorpe, David Hockney, to name but a few.

  No, my issue was with society and how it treated the average gay man, or for that matter, woman. One would have to be blind not to see the prejudice and hypocrisy they faced and deaf not to hear the slurs and insults aimed at them. How many times had I heard my own brother, who was a good and upstanding man, make some snide, derogatory remark? Christ, even in America, the land of the so-called free, fewer than twenty states recognized same-sex marriages, and Lord only knew, what other legal issues gay and lesbian couples faced when it came to things like surrogacy or adopting a child.

  That, right there, was the rub. I wanted a partner in marriage. I wanted spark. I wanted someone to love, and to be loved in return. I wanted a family. I wanted what Mitch and Miranda had. Falling in love with a woman made those things a lot easier to achieve, whereas my newly discovered obsession with dick did not.

  And that I was obsessed, I was fully aware. I wished I could remain oblivious, but unfortunately blindness to my own faults and weaknesses was not my strong point. I’d always wondered how an addict could wake in the morning, partaking of their drug of choice, and not realize they had a problem.

  And I did crave.

  And my drug of choice was Robert Callinan.

  And not just because of his dick.

  Each morning, when I woke, my gaze inevitably focused with longing on the flat-screen TV, but then I’d get to work and feel eager anticipation at the thought that I’d be Skyping with Robert at the end of the day. Time flew when we type-talked. He had theories on just about everything. He made me smile with his love of acronyms and emoticons. They proliferated his messages, revealing his passion and his humor. He disarmed me with his wit, and at times, shocked me with his directness. And yet, he was also caring, often asking after Mrs. Higginbotham, or Higgy, as he called her, and asking me to keep an eye on her and not let her overdo things. It was the same with his students—not a Skype session went by where he didn’t ask me about their progress.

  Sometimes when we Skyped I wondered if he suspected. He’d speak of watching one of the more obscure titles among my DVD collection and suggest I check out such-and-such of his. We’d debate and critique until he was due for his next class. It was just as well there were no webcams on either of our work PCs, or my guilt would have been as plain to him as the nose on my face.

  It was no better when I came home to my usual waylaying by Mrs. Higginbotham. She was a real sweetie, but her obvious devotion to Robert only fed my growing addiction. By the time she patted my hand and left—or allowed me to leave if we were having afternoon tea at her house—sheer force of will alone saw me going through the motions of cooking, eating, and washing dishes. My nights were still spent training at what I now thought of as my local tae kwon do club, or going out with my work colleagues to attend a play or see a movie. Those nights, though, saw me heading home early, never lingering. Part of me itched to forget about such things as food, training, and socializing and just immerse myself in the world of Robert Callinan—his beautiful searching eyes and his equally gorgeous cock.

  Not once, in any of our Skype sessions, did he state he was gay, and yet he didn’t hide it either. It was as if he assumed I knew or that the information didn’t matter. I envied him his ease in his own skin.

  Then came the day he laughingly typed about having dinner at my brother’s and shocking Mitch with a comment he made about fancying Viggo Mortensen’s ass. There’d been a flood of exclamation marks and emoticons in that message. Mitch, apparently, had freaked out a little. Robert thought it hilarious, but his words had made a clamp form around my chest, squeezing the breath out of me. Mitch’s reaction didn’t surprise me, especially considering what a man’s man he was. To Mitch, all gay men were stereotypical campy, effeminate pansies. Sissies. Fags. How wrong he was. That was no truer than saying all straight men loved beer and football. Gay men, like heterosexual ones, came in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Robert’s movies and the men who frequented the bathhouse and clubs had shown me that.

  I wondered if he or Miranda would mention it the next time I spoke with them, and what their attitude would be.

  “UNCLE NOAH, when are you coming home?” asked Ricky, his cute little face scrunched up. “I miss you.”

  “Yeah, and what have you bought us?” added Jared unashamedly, his blue eyes bright and eager as he squirmed in his seat. The kid never sat still!

  “Jared!” exclaimed both Mitch and Miranda in the background, but I smiled at his cheekiness.

  I was on my laptop and using a webcam, something I never did with Robert, and, as always, it made me feel a little homesick to see their little button faces. I missed my nephews.

  “Who says I’ve bought you anything, scamp?” I teased.

  “’Cause you always buy us something when you go on trips,” he replied confidently, with his six-year-old logic, ignoring the exasperated sighs from behind him from both his parents.

  “A train. Please buy me a train set, Uncle Noah,” asked Ricky, leaning so close to the webcam it distorted his features. “I promise I’ll be good and share with Jared,” he whispered, obviously thinking Mitch and Miranda wouldn’t be able to hear him.

  I laughed—sharing of their favorite toys was a bit of an issue between the twins. “We’ll see. We’ll see.”

  “Okay, that’s enough you two. Bath time.”

  I smiled again—Miranda was using what I called her Mom voice.

  I blew the boys a kiss and nearly turned to mush when Ricky leaned forward once more, this time to kiss the screen. “Come home soon, Uncle Noah. I miss you.”

  “I will, buddy. Not long now.”

  His actions tore at my heart. At my gut. It reminded me how much I wanted a family of my own. I watched the boys leave the room and the knife turned again when Jared turned to wave and grin once more before disappearing from sight.

  Mitch scooted into one of the seats they vacated, smiling broadly. “Hey, little bro. Thank God you’re on the downhill slide to coming home. Yay, only a month or two to go till the semester
ends! I don’t think I can take much more of the boys nagging me about how much longer till Uncle Noah’s back!”

  “Hey, Mitch.” I smiled—it was good to see him. I immediately slipped into teasing mode. “They can’t be any worse than you were at their age. Mom and Dad would take us on a trip and all you did was whine the whole time ‘are we there yet?’”

  Mitch snorted and rolled his eyes, just as I’d suspected he would. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black. Though God knows I think Mom and Dad deserved a medal. At least, parents today have Nintendos and iPads to keep the kids amused.”

  “We weren’t that bad. We had comics!” I chuckled at Mitch’s eager nod. He still loved comics. “At least we didn’t fight. Much.”

  “Yeah, that’s true.”

  We grinned at each other as we both remembered umpteen holidays spent traveling in a car—Mom and Dad had loved epic road trips. Dad had always said a car was a time machine: the road behind us being the past, and the road before us the future. They always made our vacations feel like a real trip into the unknown. It was that love of adventure, in the end, that had killed them. I consoled myself that at least they died doing something they both loved.

  Mitch and I hadn’t been typical siblings, not having felt much in the way of rivalry with each other. Mitch had always been the football jock with a science-cum-math-geek brain, and I’d been the track-and-field loner who’d excelled at English and art. We were as different as different could be, and yet we worked. My brother had always been my best friend.

  “Hey, Noah.” Mitch pulled me back to the present, and I smiled my acknowledgement. “You’ll be happy to know, little bro, we’ve been taping all the Sox games for you. You and I can have a Sox marathon with the boys when you get home.”

  “That will make Miranda happy!”

  Mitch chuckled. Miranda loved baseball, but she was always lecturing Mitch about getting out and playing it rather than sitting on his butt watching it.

  “She’ll just have to cope. Ricky and Jared aren’t the only ones missing you.” The gruffness of his tone spoke more loudly than his words.

  “I miss you too, Mitch. It’ll be great to sit down and watch all the games with you.”

  He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with the direction of our conversation. Talking emotions wasn’t Mitch’s strongest point. Then again, it wasn’t mine, either. Bringing our talk back to safer ground, we chatted about his work and the camping vacation he and Miranda were planning for the summer in Yosemite. When he finally paused for breath, I jumped in and told him about the latest tour I’d participated in—Dennis Severs’s house which, I informed him in my best professor’s voice, could be best likened to a three-dimensional snapshot of life in the 1700s. Not surprisingly, he did a bit more eye rolling at my tone and my enthusiasm for the tour. My brother didn’t have an artistic bone in his body. Our conversation and banter was as easy and relaxed as it had always been, and it lulled me into a false sense of security.

  Checking over his shoulder to confirm we were still alone, he changed the subject, and with his first words, I knew just how naïve I’d been to think he wouldn’t mention Robert and his newfound knowledge about him. “Dude, did you know the guy you swapped with is a homo?”

  “Excuse me?” My heart stilled for a moment before taking off at a thunderous pace.

  “Yeah, the guy’s a fairy, man. Miranda had him over to dinner a few days ago, and we put on one of Viggo Mortensen’s movies—you know the one. The gangster one where he’s been living for, like, twenty years as someone else, but then someone from his old life recognizes him. You watched it here. I can’t remember the name of it, but it’s the hot one where he and his wife role-play that he’s a jock and she’s a cheerleader. He goes down on her and they end up sixty-nining. Viggo’s munching away on her pussy, and all Robert could say was that he didn’t care that Viggo was old enough to be his father, that he’d still like a piece of his ass. I mean, fuck! Mortensen has his face buried between a chick’s thighs, and your professor dude is going on about a guy’s ass?”

  “Um, so?”

  “Dude, are you listening to me? He’s a queer. He’s into ass. Guys’ asses.”

  “To each his own,” I replied weakly, my throat so dry I was surprised I was able to say anything at all.

  “Well, I can tell you one thing: I’ll be thinking twice before I turn my back on him again. What if he took a shine to my butt?”

  “Mitch, that’s just plain stupid,” I protested, hoping my brother wouldn’t hear the quaver in my voice.

  “What? You don’t think I have a cute ass?” The grin on Mitch’s face told me he was joking.

  “That’s not what I meant, you big oaf.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not taking any chances. Phil reckons they’re all oversexed.”

  I groaned—a more homophobic asshole than Phil Steinbeck, who worked with Mitch, would be hard to find. The guy was also sexist and a racist, and normally Mitch scoffed at his outlandish statements. Miranda abhorred him and had refused to have him at the house ever since he drew a comparison between women with equality and babies with computers. In other words, equality was too much for a woman to handle, same as a computer was too sophisticated for a baby to master. The man was a bigoted jerk.

  “Since when do you listen to Phil? The guy’s a douche.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not taking any chances. My ass is, and will forever remain, virgin territory.”

  I swallowed, feeling ill, fearful that Mitch would see right through me. Seeing Miranda reenter the room, I inhaled in relief and changed the subject. “So how did the twins’ Tee Ball team do in their game last week?”

  Mitch winked, thinking I’d made the change to cover for him. Miranda flopped wearily into the vacant seat beside Mitch and immediately reached for his hand.

  “Woo-hoo, I survived another day as the mother of two hurricanes!”

  We all laughed, as the boys were certainly that. I’d been the one to nickname them Hurricane Jared and Hurricane Ricky when they were hardly out of diapers. The names had stuck.

  Thankfully, Miranda’s enthusiasm for her sons’ baseball team was as great as Mitch’s, and the rest of our chat was filled with talk about the ups and downs of their team. My gaze kept drifting back to their linked hands. A sensation I could only liken to yearning filled me at the way Mitch unconsciously stroked the back of Miranda’s with his thumb.

  Spark.

  Sixteen years together and they still had spark.

  I WAS hiding… running. I knew I was. Had been for days, ever since I spoke to Mitch and Miranda. That Mitch’s opinion of Robert had changed was as clear as day. His slightly derogatory innuendo and jokes sat like an undigested meal in my gut. I didn’t like him talking that way about Robert. I didn’t like it one bit. And, of course, it raised the question, would his attitude to me change if I admitted my newly discovered attraction to cock? I suspected it would. And so, yes, I hid.

  Perhaps I should have been proud of myself for my admission. At least I was being a little honest.

  It was true I could no longer deny that in a very real sense, I was hiding as much from myself as I was from them.

  I was hiding behind the values society placed on me, what it deemed to be “normal” and “right” and “acceptable.”

  Lying on the vast expanse of Robert’s bed, in the semidark of his room, my body was rigid and tense as if it were being forcibly restrained. But the only restraint being placed upon it was of my own making. Nothing and no one was stopping me from doing what I wanted, and what I wanted was to switch on the television.

  No, it was me. All me. After my afternoon Skype session and freak-out with my brother and sister-in-law of a few days earlier, it was me who refused to do it for fear that I would succumb to my desire and watch yet another of his movies.

  I was fully aware I was fighting a losing battle,.

  I wanted to see him. I wanted to watch him. His movies haunted me day and nigh
t. The only time I was free was when I was teaching or losing myself in an art gallery.

  It wasn’t only my dreams he’d invaded—all I needed to do was close my eyes, and I could see his ivory skin, his shock of messy brown hair, the flexing of his firm ass… and his cock, his long, thick, beautiful cock topped with a perfectly proportioned bell-shaped head that pushed itself clear from his foreskin during arousal… a head engorged and flushed to a deep rosy pink. I hid from the words that came to mind when those images taunted me: perfect… beautiful… pearlescent. They weren’t words that, in the past, I’d have associated with a man. They weren’t words I’d have thought would turn me on.

  But they did.

  He did.

  I hid because my balls were aching and my dick was hard and throbbing at just the thought of those words… those images… the vision of him. There was no denying my butt was unconsciously working itself, clenching and releasing as image after image of Robert thrusting into the eager willing ass of one of his men inserted itself into my mind.

  My excitement terrified me. I was petrified it was going to make me come again… as hard and intense as it had the last time… and the time before that… and the time before that.

  I hid because I didn’t want to lose my brother and my friend, his wife. I hid because I didn’t want to acknowledge to myself that I wanted Robert—that I longed to be the man beneath him, receiving his splendid cock into my body.

  And I most certainly didn’t want to admit to myself that not only did I desire him, but I wanted to please him so much he would plunder my eagerly offered virgin ass again and again.

  My mind rebelled—I didn’t want to want him.

  I didn’t want to be turned on.

  I wanted to feel this way about a woman, not a man, not even a man as glorious as Robert Callinan.

  Denial would be better—more acceptable—but my leaking dick and fluttering ass, evidence of my arousal, made a mockery of what my rational mind preferred.