by Damon Suede
But Andy wasn’t anything like a woman. Whatever excuses Ruben made, he couldn’t pretend otherwise. Andy wasn’t some pretty boy, and the attraction had plenty to do with him being a strong, successful man.
The thought made Ruben gruff and panicky, but the feeling flowed easily between them. He couldn’t control it anymore, and at times he stopped wanting to. His cock was sprung, tenting the cotton.
“And listen.” Andy poked him. “Never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” He relaxed into the cushions. He only relaxed like this, the two of them together.
Because he trusts you. Ruben sat there amazed and amused.
“So.” Andy bumped him, smelling like fresh bread. “I was thinking a dude-movie night.” He leaned forward to unload waxy cartons of Thai food onto the large chrome coffee table. “I didn’t know what you dug, so Hope ordered the one-of-everything spread.”
“Now?” Ruben looked at his watch; the little hand pointed to eleven. Did Andy expect him to go stake out a crowded theater in the middle of the night?
“Maybe Scarface. Or Duplicity? After today, I’m in the mood to see some fancy assholes taken down.”
Ruben looked down at his clothes. “I didn’t know you were planning to go—”
“Netflix IMAX, my man.” Andy tapped his phone and the digital shades activated.
“There’s no such—” The big living room windows blurred into a perfectly white wall. “Thing.”
Jesus Christ, the toys.
He ignored Andy’s hopeful, lonely smile and shook his head no. “I’m beat.” More like I’m beaten. Less exhaustion than a swift retreat from Andy’s full-frontal charm offensive. Next stop, Andy would break out his porn collection and things would get insane.
“You don’t have to go hole up in your room. We’re both here.”
Was Andy trying to kill him?
Instead, Ruben decided to take a shower and read before the Dolby explosions proved too tempting and short-circuited his logic. If he gave in to his grunting passive man brain, he’d end up on the couch snacking and bullshitting with his boss until 4:00 a.m. watching sequels he’d hated the first time, undirected testosterone choking the air like spermy smog. Ruben didn’t doubt for a second they’d have fun. Andy’s charm and humor would trick him into lowering his guard and spilling his messy emotions between them.
Ruben declined. “Next time.” Meaning never, but telling this truth wasn’t an option he had.
And oh man did Andy look handsome in his rumpled T-shirt, surrounded by gleaming luxury with a DVD menu projected thirty feet wide behind him. At his feet, the bear skull glowed in its Lucite trunk.
Maybe all Andy wanted was a friend, but Ruben needed something more. He was sober enough to see the potential disaster for both of them and steer the fuck clear.
Back in his room, behind the closed door, Ruben changed into shorts and, after a moment, the new sweatshirt. Even if it was his imagination, the apartment felt cold to him.
Liliana, the invisible maid, had made the bed for him. Worse, she had actually ironed his four thousand dollar sheets. He ran a dark hand over them. The pressed cotton felt like something woven out of the eyelashes of angels.
Someone had moved his things. The maid maybe, but the room felt… off. Hangers shifted. Ammo clip on the wrong shelf. The drawers subtly rearranged and his toiletries out of order. Why? It had to be the housekeeper. Still, the intrusion seemed too casual, too familiar.
He needed to be vigilant against that weird sleepover vibe that Andy encouraged. The man was lonely, but that didn’t make them friends. Ruben was an employee hired to do a job and that was all. They liked each other, and that just made the gig less of a hassle.
No. Doing his job meant avoiding the illusion of intimacy and maintaining clear boundaries. Hell, staying sober was no different. The program had plenty to say about boundaries and respecting them.
And still, and still… he knew that the border between boss and buddy could get blurry in close quarters with the wrong person even if he was the right guy.
One more reason why Ruben hadn’t wanted to move into this bachelor pad, eating food he couldn’t spell with assistants wiping his ass. This penthouse was too much of a hermetically sealed playpen. Everything just jumbled together in a way that confused him. No real cost for anything. Free glitz and swapping stories from his days as a hardcore loser. Jogging in the park, ducking into the gym and taking a dip in a pool built in midair and then forgotten.
A quick flash of Andy’s wet blue shorts and the blinding strap of his jock at the top of his hamstring. The smell of warm bread.
Ruben blinked it away, but the tenacious image re-formed gradually as if he’d stared too long at the sun and Andy’s creamy lower back had burned his eyes. As he plugged in his phone, texted his brother, emptied his suit pockets, he couldn’t stop seeing Andy climb out of the hot turquoise square, water sheeting off him. Then the high, square jut of his backside under those filmy shorts that made Ruben’s eyes too heavy to raise.
Cachondo.
He brushed his teeth. Again and again, the blue pool and the blue shorts, and the glitter-spatter of diamond drips on the hot deck as Andy approached… step by step.
Gah. Uncomfortable and crazy, but Ruben knew better than to try and bottle it up and let it fester. Peach would have said that shame only puts the liquor in your hand.
Obviously Andy had started to symbolize something scary or important, something that needed attention, only he wasn’t smart enough to put the pieces together yet. The first step was acknowledging this thing existed.
Whatever the next step was, he hoped he could take it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HALOS TURN into nooses.
The second jet of semen hit his forehead and Ruben woke up shouting.
“Goddamnit.” He fumbled for the lamp. Another fucking wet dream. His third in a week. He could smell the salt, and taste a bit.
Bad enough to bust sauce in your own bed, but when you’re sleeping on four-thousand dollar sheets that had to be hand ironed? He was covered in spooge and in two seconds the sheets would be too.
Worse, he remembered the dream that had tripped his trigger. And it had fuck-all to do with natural.
All week, he’d been blaming the sheets, their cotton softer than he was used to. Ever since he’d moved into Andy’s apartment, he went to sleep drilling his thick stiffy into the silky slip of them. And about every third night, popping inside his boxers. What the hell was he supposed to do, wear a condom to bed?
More like he needed to stop sleeping.
In this dream, Ruben lay stretched out on the beach right where Twelfth Street hits Ocean Drive. He knew he was dreaming because in real life, he never went there. The locals knew it as a strip for queer tourists on the make… an army of young bucks juiced and shredded, stuffed into three hundred dollar bathing suits they ditched in the dunes.
But just now, this hot slice of dream sand in front of the Palace was miraculously noon-baked and gay-free.
Ruben lay spread-eagled with oily sweat sliding off his burnished brown skin into the sand. His dick and balls made a blunt mound under blue Lycra rowers, tight enough to ride up his crack under him. Stud meat grilling in the sun.
It had to be a dream because he wouldn’t wear Lycra on a bet, and he could smell the haze of alcohol. Not beer or gin, but the clean sweet booze sweating out of him in the heat. His mouth felt too loose and sloppy to speak. His weak limbs tingled. Obviously in the dream he’d gotten plastered, and some sneaky homos had stripped him half-naked and staked him out like a sacrificial ram in the ocean glare.
With the strange certainty of dreams, Ruben knew he was late for something but couldn’t get up. Had he overslept? Was he injured? Turning his head he realized his wrists were held by muscular hands sticking up out of the sugary sand. The fuck? Buried hands gripped his ankles too, and even with the oil and the sweat he couldn’t wrench free or sit up. Ruben strained against the familiar
hands, but they held fast. Too confused to call out.
What if someone sees?
His ass clenched, and the Lycra squeezing his privates felt a little too good. To his horror his thick foreskin slid back and his raw square knob punched past the waistband to kiss the air. The ticklish slip of the clenched fingers over his wrists and ankles gave him a funny feeling which he fought hard. His erection strained against his suit, dribbling sauce back into the sweat and oil. He needed to bust and go. He was so late already for… something.
What was I doing? All he could see was his boner glistening in the glare.
Worse, if he didn’t get free in time, he was going to nut all over himself in burning daylight where anyone who bothered to look could watch his lust and shame. His shaft was granite and his balls an aching knot below. He’d never get loose in time.
Don’t make me.
He tugged and flexed against those slick man hands.
“Se siente cachondo.” Was Andy whispering in his ear or was he just remembering inside the dream? He could smell fresh bread and imagine lips against his neck. Andy’s hushed-gravel voice. “Caaa-chonnnn-doh.”
Whining with frustration, Ruben squirmed and arched with scorching grit stuck to his wet back. His slick asscheeks slid together, the sweat tickling, and his spine bowed up off that sand thrusting his dark cock like a pillar rising from his flexed muscle. His wrists and ankles pinned by pitiless hands while he fucked the air, fucked the scalding blue sky.
Don’t make me. Don’t make me. Don’t—
“Graawgh!” On the imaginary Florida shore, he gave a strangled roar as he came. The sound and spatter woke him for real in Manhattan, panting in the penthouse, shouting into the air with Andy right overhead. Sleeping, pray God. Ruben had been plenty loud.
Loser. Globs of semen on his forehead, his chin, his left pec, and a jammy puddle at his navel trickling to the right. He remembered a dirty joke from junior high, about going to bed with a problem on his mind and waking up with the solution on his chest.
Before things got messier, Ruben grabbed tissues and mopped himself. He wadded them up and tossed them in the direction of the trash. His ragged breath and heart slowed to a jog and then a walk while he sucked in the starchy air. Again. He’d rinse the sheets and change them before the damn maid came.
He needed a woman in the worst way.
But I want him. He frowned. I shouldn’t but I do.
He needed to get a fucking grip before something stupid happened. Andy Bauer had no interest in him.
Ruben opened the water on his nightstand and took a sip.
Just then, a wicked thirst for something stronger batted at Ruben, but he knew it for habit and laziness.
“HALT.” He said it out loud, a warning. Medicinal booze had no place in his life. One of Peach’s favorite slogans: One is too many and a thousand is never enough.
He’d popped his jollies ’cause his body needed it. The rush of lush endorphins only made him feel more insane; he rocked onto his feet and cracked his back, popped his neck.
To give himself something to do, he went to the john in the dark and tried to take a piss, then gave up. He opened the terrace door and wandered outside, glanced upstairs. At least Andy’s lights were still off, so hopefully he hadn’t heard Ruben’s stupid shout.
To the west, the top of Central Park sprawled dark and fuzzy as moss. He remembered walking and running through it. Down on the thirty-third floor, the pool glimmered like a bright lozenge floating a quarter mile above the Park Avenue concrete.
How high was he? In his head he imagined his little brother’s voice: “Too fucking high.” Charles hated heights.
In Miami he’d have gone for a walk, taken a dip, climbed up to the roof to have a smoke, anything to clear his head. He couldn’t do that in New York, especially in this foofy penthouse. His fingers itched to dial Peach for a sympathetic ear and stupid West Side Story quotes, but even if he did, he knew he couldn’t tell her the truth about Andy. No point.
He rubbed his hard damp stomach absently and stared at the back door.
Gym. He’d go work out in the building gym long enough to wear himself out. He didn’t even bother to go back to his room for sweats or a shirt. Fuck it: no one would be up at this hour. His sleep shorts covered up the naughty bits, anyway. He wasn’t on duty till sunup. Who’d know? Instead of going back inside to the dumb bookshelf door, he hooked around to the service entrance by the spa on the north end of the terrace.
Ruben threw the dead bolt and tugged. A swoosh of dull, damp air from the back stairs met his face along with the smell of baked zucchini from the trash cans. The porter would come up in the service elevator to collect those before sunup.
Uncertain how loud the elevator would be or if it would alert the building’s staff, Ruben opted for the stairs down to the thirty-third floor. The lit hallway led to the dark gym, and the wool carpet felt soft under his brown feet. Outside, the lonely swimming pool glowed bright blue through the glass. Watery reflections crawled over the ceiling like an antidote for the kinky sunbaked nightmare that had just made him squirt.
Maybe I need a dip.
No one would be up at this hour and the doormen knew him on sight. Ten bucks said the staff snuck up here with their kids on weekends when the whole building had decamped to swanky summer houses.
He grinned. When would he ever have a chance for a swim in a private pool, at midnight in midair? He’d soak long enough to clear the homo fantasies out of his head, and be back in bed in a half hour. No way could he sleep this keyed up.
Ruben stepped out of the toy gym into the dank June air. This high up, the only light came from the pool at his feet, which threw everything into hard silhouette.
Without second-guessing, he skinned out of his spermy shorts, the briny mess starting to cool against his thigh. At this god-awful hour, if any neighbors did see his brown ass swimming naked, he’d be a slippery shadow.
He plunged diagonally into the gleaming surface with a swoosh. Slicing through the lukewarm water, he reached the chalky bottom way too fast, and almost whacked his head against the pool’s far wall and the wave machine vent. He stopped himself at the last minute with his outstretched hand and pushed off. Not really deep enough for diving, then. He hung suspended underwater for a moment, floating in the phosphorescent cube of tropical blue.
Ruben drifted to the surface. Better. Chlorinated water slapped against the tile as his waves doubled back. Kicking off the wall, Ruben swam slow laps. His body wasn’t ripped and never had been. All his uncles had been the same kind of thick and solid, but he swam like a dolphin from growing up on the sea.
In the shallows, the pool lapped at his stiff nipples. The overcast sky was starless and the street below too distant to be anything but dim and quiet. Ruben knew he wasn’t high enough to be swimming in the clouds, but it felt that way.
For the first time since he’d moved to this city, he felt right in his own skin. He scraped the wet from his face and his hair dripped.
Who lived like this? Ruben hung suspended in the middle of all this luxury he hadn’t earned. His job was to protect and support the principal and keep the swag safe. He thought of the skinny armies of Upper East Side housewives: endlessly shopping-shopping-shopping so that their houses and wardrobes could best all the others. What did Andy say? Gladiatorial combat with a platinum AmEx.
Andy would be getting up in a couple hours for the opening of the markets in Europe.
Ruben twitched. All his buddy-buddy hero worship bullshit felt theoretical. He didn’t want to know what two men did together. Well, he knew the basics, but Ruben had no interest in sleeping with some grizzled, hairy dude. Even if Andy wasn’t grizzled or hairy, they were just buddies.
C’mon man. What if Andy had peeled those shorts off before inviting him in? What would he do if Andy turned up ready to splash around in the dark? If Andy snuck down right now to skinny-dip, would he have the guts to tell the truth like a good twelve-stepper?
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br /> He remembered the wet shorts plastered to Andy’s perfect rear, the golden fluff on his calves, that goofy dimple.
Jesus.
As if Ruben had whistled for a blind dog, his cock hardened right up in the water. The head jutted almost rectangular in the snug foreskin that never slid all the way forward or back.
He wasn’t gay. Andy worked out was all. Ruben could appreciate something well-made without needing to sing along to Beyoncé and hang around public restrooms with his fly open. Far as Ruben was concerned, it was a huge leap from admiring a nice ass to blowing your boss.
He shook his head, but no one had asked a question. A car shooshed by a couple hundred feet below, in whatever direction.
Even cupping his dick felt a little too good. Funny thing about a promise to yourself: only you know when you break it. He dropped his hand and reached for his boxers. Last thing he needed was some tenant seeing his crank because he was fighting a weird crush.
His sweaty wet dream had taken an edge off at least. Ruben had always squirted like a cracked hydrant. Big Colombian huevos, Marisa used to say. In the water-bent light his nutsack looked especially dark, snug against the oversized boxer legs he got from his pop’s family. He always bought his shorts baggy so he could move in them.
After five minutes, his balls felt colder than the water and unpleasantly hollow, as though someone were crushing them in a vise. The aftershocks of blue balls; they emptied so fast they’d probably wracked themselves. The erection refused to flag.
Before his fingerprints pruned, Ruben decided he’d been out here long enough. He needed to catch a catnap at least because in another hour, Andy would be talking to his Belgians.
A sound made him look up at the dark wall of windows, aware of how naked he was. Nobody could be up at this hour, right?
Ruben debated slipping the shorts on underwater, but figured a pokey is a pokey. At least dry shorts wouldn’t cling. He gripped the lip and pressed out of the pool, careful not to scrape the cockhead, because ow. The wetness had flattened his trimmed chest hair into whorls.