by Damon Suede
The sight of Andy pliant and naked, bent over Ruben’s wet suit and hidden erection, was doing terrible things to his self-control. Time to go, but he couldn’t make himself stop. His hands in Andy’s hair got rougher than necessary.
Andy made no complaint, allowing himself to be manhandled. Straightening, Andy rested his hands on Ruben’s shoulders, balancing himself. He faced Ruben but his eyes stayed shut and his mouth fell open. Water dripped from his open lips.
Nudge. Something firm bumped Ruben’s quad through the wet wool and he stepped back, turned away. That had to be Andy’s wood.
Abort! Abort!
Ruben fumbled and turned Andy’s naked body away. For a moment, his hand gripped the hard curve of Andy’s hip where it rose up to his perfect butt. “I think we’re done.”
“Okay.” Andy’s voice seemed quiet and unfazed behind him.
Ruben avoided looking at his boss and turned off the shower, then moved out into the bathroom to snatch at one of the big bath sheets.
Was Andy annoyed? Horny? Disgusted? Relieved? Queasy? Anyone’s guess.
Ruben tossed the towel at him without letting himself look up. Tricky, tricky. “We good?”
“Ungh. Better. Thanks.”
Ruben nodded without looking at his boss. “Fine.” His hand, the one that had cupped Andy’s muscular hip, still burned.
“Sorry about falling. Suit.”
Ruben shook his head. “Nuh.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could just detect the flicker of the towel scrubbing Andy’s perfect skin. His wet suit felt chilly now, but fuck if he was gonna strip down here. He was already humiliated and terrified of his savage impulses. “I’m gonna…. Dry clothes.”
“So fuckin’ sorry, man.” Andy wrapped the towel around himself and walked toward Ruben, the lump of his trapped erection square and center. He blinked.
Before he could close the distance, Ruben raised a hand and made his escape. “Night.”
“Oh. G’night.”
Ruben dripped his way through the bedroom and down the library stairs and into his quarters, shutting the door with a determined click. He peeled off the soaked clothes and draped them in the bathroom. The shirt stuck to his skin, so he had to peel slowly and when he was naked, his goosebumped skin felt clammy and dead. Only his dick hadn’t gotten the message, stiff and hot inside his wet briefs.
He looked down at the hand. He flexed his fingers twice but he couldn’t get rid of the memory of Andy’s pale muscle still imprinted on his palm. To his horror, he caught himself raising the hand to his nose and inhaling as if the fresh bread scent would linger, as if it had mingled with his own musk, as if he hoped it had. The skin there seemed unnaturally warm, tattooed by the contact, maybe because he was paying attention to it. He leaned closer and the graze of his stubbled mouth on his own palm only made him imagine… things.
Cachondo.
Without questioning the impulse, he opened his mouth and licked his lifeline, a wide hot swipe of tongue over the memory of Andy’s skin, but all he tasted was salt.
He shivered. The spit on his palm cooled. His clothes had gone cold and his mouth dry.
He climbed out of his soaked briefs and took his own shower, hot enough to scald his skin, but not enough to make his hand forget.
CHAPTER NINE
NO ONE should apologize for what they have to do.
To keep a lid on his inappropriate thoughts, Ruben started spot-testing the security systems and stopped sleeping. Four days after the Jaded excursion, Ruben woke up just after midnight.
More dreams, more questions, and a stiffy that wouldn’t stop. He needed to get away, get his shit together. He just needed some oxygen, some distance, some perspective. The Iris felt like living in a casino. He couldn’t keep track of the days because normal hours and regular habits went to shit. No clocks, free glitz, and hot-and-cold-running con jobs.
He called Peach and left a message, which didn’t help much because he couldn’t come clean about his feelings for Andy. He wanted to go home, but couldn’t figure out where the hell that might be.
Truth was, he felt at home in this ridiculous building even though he had no claim on its space. But Charles’s place was right uptown and empty.
Ruben glanced at the clock. 12:17.
Andy was still asleep because his London conference call wouldn’t start for three hours. Ruben told himself he’d be back before anyone knew he was gone. If he was gonna go, he didn’t have much time.
Okay, but now.
Without showering again, he yanked on a pair of jeans he hadn’t worn in weeks and a baseball cap and made sure his keys were in his pocket. “Hungry-angry-lonely-tired,” he whispered to himself over and over like a mantra. “Hungry-angry-lonely-tired.”
He reached Ninety-Fourth Street before he started to hail a cab and discovered he’d left his wallet in the penthouse.
No matter. He’d be back before he needed it.
His phone rang as he walked up Park. “Peach.” He said her name as an anxious greeting. Bad. Everything he needed to share stuck in his throat.
“Oh kiddo,” she muttered as she woke. “Talk to me.”
He did, about everything but Andy, who was the only thing.
Neither of them mentioned the time, but she sounded grumpy and tired. “You’re alone too much, Ruben.”
“I’m never alone.”
Annoyance made her sound older. “Up in that high-rise. Couch. Committing suicide on the installment plan. You’re living in a cage, kiddo, and that’s a problem for people like us. Isolation.”
“I’m not. I’m going out with friends right now, actually. Dinner with my brother.”
“Dinner. Now?” Rustle on the other end. “Maybe you need a sponsor up there. Could be, who knows?”
Ruben frowned, guilty. “I woke you up, didn’t I?” The deserted streets made him feel like whispering.
“I’m too old to sleep.” A wheezy cough. “Ruben, be straight with me. Is this a backslide? Are you drinking?”
“No! Peach, no. It’s not booze or dope, it’s—” Andy. “I’m not in trouble.” A fucking lie.
“Are you trying to shit me, old as I am? Gimme some credit. Paranoid. Secretive. Outta control. It ain’t the load that weighs us down, it’s the way we carry it. Talk to me, kiddo.”
“I’m lonely, is all. I don’t need a new sponsor. I swear. I wish I knew how to pray.”
“Ruben, trying to pray is praying.” She sighed. “Breathe. Howzat Fourth Step coming?
He stopped at a red light as if the empty street were rush hour. “Listen, I’m almost there. Can I call you tomorrow?” As soon as he said it, he knew he wouldn’t.
“Okay. Okay. Eat. Sleep. Work your Steps.” Her voice pulled away from the phone to cough. “Ruben, I love you, God loves you, and there’s fuck-all you can do about it. Okay?” She hung up.
Time bomb. Not much fuse left. How long before he blew?
The light changed and he flinched.
When Ruben crossed the street to his brother’s apartment, the door and the staircase felt comically small. As he unlocked the door, he expected to find it empty but smelled mushrooms as soon as he went inside.
Shit.
Charles was cooking eggs for Daria in his boxers and an undershirt. His sweaty hair and cat-cream smile made it pretty clear what he’d been doing for the past hour or two.
“There he is.” Charles pointed at him, grinning, like they’d made an appointment for midnight breakfast.
Ruben hesitated in the narrow kitchen doorway under a white plastic disc with a tiny red light. The salvaged carbon monoxide detector looked to be in perfect working order.
Charles followed his eyes. “Home improvement. Breathing easy now. Thanks for that, bro.”
“Carlos?” Daria’s hesitant voice floated down the hall. “Did you leave?”
“It’s my brother.” Charles jabbed lazily at the omelet pan.
“Didn’t know you’d be here.” Ruben glanced tow
ard the dim living room, wishing he had somewhere else to go. “Sorry, man.”
“Nah. Y’hungry?” He held up the spatula.
Ruben shook his head. He hadn’t thought past getting here and sitting with himself. One shitty thing about this New York adventure, he didn’t have any place where he was alone.
Daria stepped out wearing one of Charles’s gigantic sweatshirts and a pair of girly pajama bottoms. She crossed her arms defensively over her big breasts. “Hey.”
Ruben nodded bashfully. “I’m so sorry.”
She smiled then and he knew it was okay. “We never come here because my place is so much nicer, but we went to a concert at the Ninety-Second Street Y and didn’t want to go back to Queens.”
Ruben nodded. His knuckles sweated. The thirst for a stiff drink, three fingers of anything that burned, grabbed his throat, and shook.
At the end of meetings, the chair always asked the group if anyone had a “burning desire.” Meaning: was anyone in imminent danger of drinking as soon as they walked outside? If someone hadn’t had a chance to share or be heard, that moment gave them a last chance to speak up. For the first time in his life, Ruben fully understood those words. Burning desire.
Charles and Daria being here was a blessing. Fuck knows what he would’ve done on his own. Shame made him blush in the hot hallway. “I just needed a break. Get away for a bit. Clear my head.”
Daria nodded, patting Charles as he stirred the pan. “Air.”
“Exactly.”
Charles raised an eyebrow. “I thought that place had a deck and pool and all.”
“It’s a fortress. Surveillance and shit. You don’t know.”
Daria shrugged. “Sometimes you don’t want anything between you and the sky.”
Ruben nodded. He liked this girl. He hoped Charles treated her right.
Daria said, “When my parents moved here from Puerto Rico, everyone used to sit out in their windows all day long.”
“Fffnt. Puerto Ricans,” Charles said as if that explained everything.
“Hush.” She punched his arm. “In San Juan no building was higher than two stories and they came to New York and suddenly everything was this stone tower with a view.” She laughed and so they all did.
Ruben had a flash of his mom in the backyard picking tomatoes. Immigrants came to the States to get away from that other life they’d had, but most often they brought it with them, carried the past around forever. He did the same. And how much of Andy’s razzle-dazzle was him trying to shake off the suburbs?
Ruben crossed his arms and squeezed himself. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping and I thought it’d be good to get out, go to a meeting.” A lie, but an honorable one.
“But you’re not drinking.” Charles frowned.
“No.”
Daria shook her head. “Carlos.”
Ruben smiled at her. “He’s right. I gotta be vigilant. ‘There’s no shortcut,’ is what AA says. The elevator is broken; take the fucking Steps.”
Humiliation didn’t hang easily on him. The only time he’d felt real shame in his life had been right after the divorce, during his first meetings. AA kicked the stuffing out of you at first and forced you to salvage what you could from the rubble of your life. Even dropping out of boot, he’d thought only of the baby they’d lost, not the military oath of service he’d broken so casually.
Charles plated her eggs and stole a bite. “The check clears. He had a break-in but nothing happened, right?”
Daria side-eyed him and studied Ruben. “You gotta feeling. About that place.”
He nodded. “I can’t even explain it. I feel like all the pieces are there, but I don’t know how to put them together. I’m too slow.”
Charles shook a fork at him. “You searched the place? I dunno. Maybe answers. Maybe bugs. Paper trail.”
Daria squinted at him kindly, mothering him. “Maybe you’ve been alone too much. Working too much. You need to meet people. Get around people who live right.”
“I’d love that.” Ruben meant it. “But Andy’s got me living there. Bauer, I mean.”
“He’s gotta pool. He likes you. You should have a barbecue. Y’know? When you go back. Invite the whole building over for a cookout up here. Meet the neighbors.”
“I don’t think these are that kinda neighbors.”
“Why?” She tilted her head. “You met ’em? All neighbors are the same, papá. Jus’ people.” She tickle-scratched his arm with her long pink nails. For once the invasion of his personal space didn’t bug him. Just showed how far Andy had whittled away at his boundaries. He sighed.
How to explain what Andy made him feel, what this job was doing to him? He opened and shut his mouth. His loneliness strangled him like a python.
She looked at him with sympathy. “Oh, papá.”
Charles laughed. “Cheer up. Life isn’t everything.”
“You want some eggs?” She offered her plate.
They smelled delicious, but Ruben shook his head. “I think you’re right. I need air more than anything. I’m gonna walk back. I’ll figure it out one way or another.”
Daria wiped her hands and gave him a squishy hug. “You gonna be okay.” A statement, not a question.
“Of course he is.” Charles thumped him on the back.
“I gotta go babysit the boy who cried wolf.”
She grinned. “I guess that’s your answer, huh?”
“Why?”
Daria stared into his eyes, unblinking. “Because the boy ended up being right. There were wolves.”
Ruben frowned.
She nodded like she knew. “And that boy was crying.”
He thought about nothing else walking all thirty blocks in the dark with his hands jammed in his pockets. The “burning desire” had faded. His confusion had not.
Back at the apartment, he made it back to his room without incident. He set his alarm for four, figuring that while Andy was yelling at the Brits he could snoop a little deeper than he had. Maybe he could access the surveillance equipment? The answers had to be here somewhere in the penthouse. His money was on Andy’s private space. He told himself he was looking for clues to the threat, but in truth he needed to figure Andy out before he did something to embarrass them both.
There were wolves.
Snooping around Andy’s personal shit for personal reasons was completely unethical, but he needed some indication of what Andy was thinking. Charles was right. He hadn’t done a proper grid search; who knows what he’d find.
At quarter past four, he stood outside the office long enough to verify Andy was awake and inside, then crept up to the second floor and the master suite.
He hadn’t been in here often and never alone. Like a lair, it was sweet with Andy’s bakery scent.
He started with the obvious. The books on the shelf were a mix of business biographies and crappy thrillers, red and black paperbacks with a lot of stylized targets and silhouettes. The tiny DVD collection was action blockbusters and a Hitchcock box set. No surprises there.
Nothing under the bed at all, not a nickel or a shoe, which seemed bizarre. Ruben gave credit to the housekeeper.
The end table beside the bed contained a jumble of business cards, a strip of superthin Japanese condoms (two missing), and a pump dispenser of silicone lube (Gun Oil). Either Andy jerked off with grease, or else he just generally liked things slick when he got busy. The thought of Andy smacking one out on this bed over Ruben’s made him skip a beat. There were no tissues, but maybe he wiped up with his shorts or a towel. Or maybe he just rubbed the hot load into his skin, while Ruben slept right below him.
Ruben flashed on Andy climbing out of the pool in wet shorts and the dream beach and just as quickly blinked the images away.
Cachondo.
He slammed the drawer closed.
The fuck was he doing anyway? This kind of addictive behavior didn’t lead anywhere good. Should’ve left that first week. He’d tried.
A loud whoomp-hum
mm startled him. Busted! But no, just the compressor kicking on. Still, a good reminder that his clock was ticking.
Ruben saw bunched whiteness between the frame and the end table. A handkerchief? Boxers? He could only just reach it with his fingertips. Cotton twisted into a damp white cigar and a telltale briny scent. Ruben knew what it was before he reached down, and he picked the shorts up anyway.
Semen. Fresh enough to still be damp.
So Andy jerked off. So what? Most guys did.
Ruben licked his lips and a tightening in his pants told him he was on thin ice. His breath sounded loud and freaky in his ears. Without thinking, he opened his mouth to breathe more quietly. The cotton smelled like Andy and jizz, and any second Ruben was about to perpetrate some pervy shit that would land him in a tabloid.
Did these mean something? Surely he didn’t leave wet shorts for the maid. Maybe Andy had frosted his boxer briefs and left them for Ruben to find?
Or maybe you’re a sicko stalker.
He tucked the boxers back into place. His hands shook till he made fists. He’d been up here too long. He’d toss the closet and then head back down. Andy could wrap up his conference call any minute.
The closet was bigger than his brother’s apartment. More suits than he’d ever seen outside of a department store, but that figured. Thirty-six. Thirteen pairs of dress shoes, two pairs of handmade sneakers, and a pair of crocodile cowboy boots that had never been worn, the soles glossy as nail polish.
On one side, a rack of gleaming ties, a tray of coiled belts, and a mesh basket of swimwear. A built-in cabinet housed socks, undershirts, and shorts folded in perfect sorted rows. A laundry basket in one corner held an undershirt, athletic socks, and a pair of sleep shorts still warm from being worn.
Ruben paused, the hamper lid raised, because until that moment he’d never realized just how much he’d thought about Andy’s cock. It gave him a cold feeling in the hollow of his gut.
This is wrong. Snooping around the apartment like this had nothing to do with protecting Andy and everything to do with his own embarrassing impulses. He’d checked guys in the locker room, but never because he wanted them.