by R J Scott
“Maybe he needs help from a friend who gives blowjobs.”
“Maybe,” I conceded as my cheeks reddened a bit. “What about Mom? What are we going to do about her?”
“We’re going to let her make her own mistakes, babes. Same as we do for you. Want more cookies?”
“Will you sit and talk with me while I eat them?”
She smiled so widely her wrinkled cheeks nearly hid her deep brown eyes. “You know Lola always here for my babes.”
“Yeah, I know.” I reached over the empty cookie plate and threaded my fingers into hers. “I know.”
I tracked him down at his hotel. It was easy. I just called Adler Lockhart, the man I’d seen kissing Layton Foxx. He was happy to tell me what room Dieter was in, as well as some story about a goat followed by a joke about a lima bean going to confession. This would be stop one on the Tough Talk Tours. After I was done setting Dieter straight, it was back home to lie in wait for my mother and confront her as well. Yep. Watch Trent fight back.
A couple of hours ago, fueled up by Lola’s tea, cookies, and motivational talk, this had seemed like a grand idea. Go see Dieter with food in hand – that was Lola’s idea – and tell him that I would help him as much as I could but that I could not get more involved with him. Friends. We would just be friends. Maybe with a few benefits. Sucking his dick had been incredible. I’d bet he’d be lively as a bottom or a top. I was happy with either.
Imagine that long, fat cock being slowly pushed into—
“Trent, for the love of all the gods, stop it,” I hissed at myself, and knocked sharply on the door of room 22-B.
Friends. Just friends. No dick sucking. No kissing. Absolutely no cocks in anyone’s ass. Nope. No. None of that. Friends. A man helping a man who was struggling. Me being a good soul. Someone fetch me a freaking merit badge.
The door opened. I looked up and saw Dieter’s expression shift from morose to ecstatic in the span of a heartbeat. There was that smile again. The one that showed off a small dimple on his right cheek. The one that cut through the dark fog of fear and unease like a beacon from a lighthouse. The smile that made me stammer and look stupid.
“Food.” I lifted the insulated tote that Lola had filled with home-cooked goodness, and offered it to him. “I mean my grandmother made us food. For a picnic. Inside. Where no one can see us talking. We need to talk.”
“Oh, wow, this is great.” He flung the door wide open.
I sucked in a deep breath, smelled Dieter and dark sandalwood, and knew my boat was headed for rocky shores, to keep with the whole lighthouse/maritime motif my mind was stuck in.
“I’m really glad to see you.”
I turned, purple tote from the local market in hand, as the door closed. “I was rude to you and I need to apologize.”
Dieter shook his head. “No, you don’t need to do that. I shouldn’t have laid all that on you.”
“No,” I argued. “I need to sit down and explain why I acted like I did. I also want to offer you my friendship to help you get through your problems with pills.”
“It’s all good.” He smiled widely.
My aft hit the rocks. Aft. Was that the front of a boat? Who knew? Sailors, I’d wager. Pity I’d never piloted a ship before. Which explained why mine was already taking on water.
“I dumped them all down the drain. I’m done with them. I’m clean.”
I heard what he was saying, I just couldn’t make myself believe I was hearing it. I looked around, found the dresser, and placed the tote carefully on top of it. Then I unwrapped my scarf – the one I’d torn slightly in the tussle with the doors of my rink – and threw it beside the tote.
“Dieter, honey, you can’t just go cold turkey. You know that, right?”
“No, I can. I kicked them before. And this time? I got off them early. So it’s good.”
My sweet lord, he truly believed what he was saying. Oh my…
“Why don’t we sit down at that little table on the patio and talk?”
“Sure, yeah, that would be great.” He rushed around the bed to the sliding glass doors. Then he threw it open with such eagerness it rattled dangerously when it hit the end of the track. The sounds of Philadelphia floated in. “I’m so glad to see you, Trent. I like you.”
“I like you too,” I admitted.
I took the tote in hand again, and walked past him and out onto the cramped patio. The city lay spread out below us, skyscrapers reaching up to touch the setting sun. The table and chairs were dusty. Dieter ran inside when I wrinkled my nose, and returned with a T-shirt to wipe the seats and table with. Then he pulled out my chair as if I were a duchess being seated at a grand ball.
“Thank you,” I murmured as I took my seat.
He tossed the dirty shirt into his room then sat down across from me. He looked peaked and tired. I predicted he would look much worse over the next few days if he’d truly dumped all the painkillers. I said nothing, though, just reached into the tote and set small plastic Tupperware dishes on the round glass table. Down below on the street a car alarm pealed, but only for a moment.
“This smells good. What is it?” He’d lifted the lid on the container holding a mountain of pork kaldereta.
“It’s a dish made with pork and tomatoes. Kind of like pork stew, I guess. My grandmother made it yesterday, but it’s better the next day.”
“Is your grandmother Japanese or Chinese?” He took the silverware I handed him. “Is that too nosy? I’m just…I want to know about you; your family and stuff.”
“No, she’s Pilipino. She married my grandfather, an American serviceman, when he was stationed in Manila at Subic Bay during the Vietnam Conflict. She came back with him, had my mother here in the States, and became a citizen back in the seventies.”
“Oh, okay, so you’re like a quarter Pilipino then.”
“Something like that.” I opened a smaller dish with some pandesal bread left over from breakfast. “And you’re German, right? Dieter Lehmann – that sounds really German.”
“Mmm, yeah, half. My mom’s Canadian. She used to figure skate.”
“Oh?” I handed him a bit of bread. He grinned and thanked me, then dipped the round roll into his stew.
“Yeah, she’s a huge fan of yours. She said she was going to see if my father and her could come down from Canada while we’re here filming to maybe meet you.”
“That would be nice.”
I ripped off a small bit of bread, then reached over to dunk it in his massive container of stew. He nodded and shoved his roll into his mouth. It seemed like the perfect time to push into the addiction talk, but…
If I did, then he’d get upset and this nice moment would be gone. So I let it go for now. We ate and made small talk instead, his eyes never leaving me. I knew I wasn’t doing myself or Dieter any favors by backpedaling. I just wanted this peaceful time before I confronted him with the cold, hard facts.
When the food was gone, Dieter sprang up, ran inside, and came out with two bottles of beer. I took mine to be polite.
“Don’t you like beer?”
“I do, but it’s really fattening.” I read the label, rolled my eyes, and took a long pull. Might as well. I’d already eaten two dozen cookies. My ass would be ginormous by the end of the year.
“You’re really lean. I don’t think a beer now and then is going to hurt you much.”
“Well, as you know, empty calories are the devil’s playthings for athletes. We could be putting good fuel into our bodies, but this is delicious.” I kissed the neck of the dark brown bottle.
Dieter snorted and walked over to the railing. He leaned down to rest his forearms on the wrought-iron rail. He had nice forearms. Thick, lightly haired, powerful. Like the rest of him. I laughed lightly at myself sitting there drinking beer while eye-fucking a hockey player. My, how Trent Hanson’s world had changed.
Dieter looked over his shoulder at me. “Something funny?”
I shook my head and stood up to join hi
m at the railing, leaving my beer on the table with the dirty Tupperware containers. He watched me come at him, like a man too stunned to move out of the way of an oncoming steel girder. If truth be told, it was me being pulled to him. Like a mound of metal shavings to a magnet. I placed my hand on his forearm, the one I’d been admiring from the table. The skin under my palm twitched. His gold-green eyes closed for a second and then reopened, snaring my sight, holding it. I ran my fingers upward, trailing them over the sensitive inner fold of his arm, then sliding them under the sleeve of his dusky blue Railers T-shirt.
“There’s nothing funny about this at all, is there?” I asked as my fingers bit into the huge muscle of his biceps.
His head moved back and forth.
My gaze lingered on his mouth. He would taste like beer and spicy pork. It was too much for a man as weak as me. My left hand rose from my side to cup his face. His cheek was thick with new whiskers. The abrasion on my tender palm fired off a jolt of want that raced to my crotch. His eyes were beautiful, entrancing. It was like gazing into the heart of a jungle thick with jade-green plants and brilliant shafts of golden sun.
“You want to go inside? I do. I want to take you to bed.”
There was only one way to answer that. I led his mouth to mine with gentle pressure to his jaw. The kiss went from delicate to demanding in the span of a millisecond. His teeth bounced off mine. I slid my hand around his head, dug my fingers deeply into the back of his skull, and speared his mouth with my tongue.
Dieter moaned low and long, meeting me stroke for stroke. Then, as if I’d scripted it from the deep recesses of my favorite fantasies, he straightened, towering over me now, his mouth sealed over mine, and dropped his bottle of beer to the table. It missed. We didn’t care. As malt and hops poured over the table and onto the patio, Dieter and I stumbled back inside, pulling at clothing while sucking on each other’s mouths. You know, like the “just friends” that we were supposed to be.
Eight
Dieter
Kissing stopped Trent talking. That was all I thought when I considered kissing him, but the minute our lips touched I went from using a kiss as a distraction to wanting him under me in bed in ten seconds flat.
Even the way Trent wriggled out of his clothes was sexy, and I tried my hardest to be sexy myself, but there was nothing hot in the way I ripped at my clothes and yanked Trent, naked, back onto my bed.
Trent was my new addiction, it seemed, and I needed him as much as I used to need the next opiate hit. I couldn’t stop kissing him, and he was so small I could pull him close and support all his weight with mine. He lay sprawled over me, hard against my thigh, and he gripped hard with his hands in my hair. And the kissing…fuck, I wanted all of him; I wanted more, kissing and touching.
Need clawed inside me. “I want to fuck you,” I said into his ear, “please.”
“Tell me you have stuff,” Trent said. Then went back to biting at my neck and kissing his way to my lips.
Blindly, I reached out and slapped my hand on the bedside cabinet, moving and taking Trent with me when I couldn’t reach. He laughed into the kiss, and it was the sweetest but dirtiest laugh I’d ever heard. Between us we found lube, condoms, and my dildo, which for some reason had Trent’s eyes widening.
“Tell me you use this on yourself,” he said. “Tell me you switch.”
I kissed the answer into his heated skin and rolled us so I was on top. “On all fours,” I said. I wanted to fuck him face to face, but first I wanted to look; I wanted to know everything about this man. He complied with a grin, spreading himself for me, and I stared.
“You going to do something?” Trent asked, looking at me over his shoulder.
I suited up, grabbed the lube, slicked my fingers, and touched every single inch. His cock was perfect, his ass tight, his thighs – god, his thighs – and I was lost. I traced cold patterns on his skin, concentrating on his cock, back to his balls, slicking his hole with just enough pressure that he was rocking back on my hand. I pressed inside as I bit his ass, then soothed the nip with my tongue. Something knocked my knee, and I glanced down to see the dildo in Trent’s hand.
“Stretch me,” he demanded.
Fuck, he was demanding, and for a second I imagined him ordering me to my knees, making me suck him off. I groaned at the thought, slicking the dildo and pressing it against him as I kissed his ass, his thighs. I used my weight to push him down so his head was in the pillows and he was supporting his weight on his elbows. Like that I could ease the fat head into him and watch it stretching him, imagining my cock in there. I gripped his cock, slid my hand from root to tip in a shaky rhythm, and the dildo was deeper, and the noises Trent made… They were obscene. Demanding.
Jesus, I was losing it.
I eased the dildo free and slid my cock into its place, smoothly, hesitating only for a moment to check if Trent was okay. But he pushed back – he wanted me inside – and I was ready to do my bit. More than ready.
I caged him under me, resting my forehead on his shoulder, and I wanted more. I wanted to kiss him; I needed to turn him. I moved back, took him with me, resting him on my thighs, fully seated inside him, and he turned his face and I could kiss him. Awkwardly, messily, but they were the best kisses as we groaned into them and demanded everything from each other. I wrapped my hands around his chest, lifted him, helped him up, gasping as he slid back down.
Fuck. I’ve never…
“Touch yourself,” I ordered, and he did as he was told in an instant. I could see his hand on his cock, then taste him in his kisses, and I was so close, but I wanted him to come with me, even given how impossible that could be.
I beat him to it by seconds, forcing myself so deep I worried I’d hurt him, but he joined me, coming and gasping into the kiss. We stayed locked like that for a second, until my knee began to ache and I eased out of him, wiping us with my discarded T-shirt and lying down on the bed. He came right to me, snuggling into my hold and sighing.
“That was good,” he murmured. “More than good.”
And all I could think was that sex with Trent was the best freaking sex of my entire life so far.
Feeling sick was what woke me. Trent was still curled against me, his face smooshed into the pillow, his hand on my chest. I eased out from under him, and he muttered something in his sleep but didn’t move. I padded to the bathroom, rubbing my belly, thinking back to what I’d eaten.
What if the kaldereta was laced with something? What if Trent is trying to get me off his skating program?
I shook my head clear of the stupid and wiped at my brow, which was sweaty, then sat on the side of the bath. The nausea was right there, boiling in my stomach, and I moved to sit next to the toilet, everything I’d eaten that night ending up consigned to the bowl. I didn’t think I’d been noisy, had tried to be sick as quietly as I could, but Trent was there, pressing a cool towel to my head and murmuring words that made no sense to me at that moment.
He laid a hand over my chest, right on my heart, and huffed, then helped me to stand. For a slim guy, he was so damn strong. He led me to the bed and urged me to sit down, but I didn’t want to sit there – I had this urge to go out to the balcony and sit the fuck still in the night air.
“I need some air,” I said, or at least, that was what I wanted to say, politely, but what came out was more of a grunted “fuck you” when Trent attempted to get me to stay in place. There was a silent tussle, but I won – however strong Trent was, I still had fifty pounds on him, and the will of a hockey player who wanted his own way.
The air was cool, and I sank into the chair, kicking away the empty beer bottle and watching it roll to the corner near the door.
When did I drop that? I guarantee some asshole dropped it from another apartment. No sense in wasting good beer. Fuckers.
Trent followed me out, pressed his hand to my heart again, and I shoved him away, because fuck off with touching me while scowling at me.
“Go away,” I snapped. I w
as embarrassed I’d been sick, my head hurt, and any high from sex had vanished.
“You have any tingling in your arms?” Trent asked, and placed a bottle of water next to me.
I fell on it gratefully, the burn of acid uncomfortable in my throat. It tasted ill; I was ill.
A bug, or goddamn food poisoning. Fucking foreign food.
“No, I don’t have any fucking tingling in my arms.”
I immediately felt bad. What was wrong with me? Trent was looking after me, giving me water, holding me, cooling my head.
“Your heart is racing,” Trent commented, and took the chair next to mine. “Are you anxious?”
Fuck me. “I’m anxious that your grandma’s cooking made me sick,” I snapped.
Trent simply looked at me, his expression neutral. He looked like he was thinking what to say, and I waited for the words of figure-skater sparkly-assed wisdom.
“You’re suffering symptoms of withdrawal,” he finally said.
“Whatever,” I gave back straight away. Because yeah, that was a sensible response to such a sweeping statement.
“Your heart, being sick, and I bet you’re sitting there cursing me for the food, and the care, and the fact that I’m actually witnessing what’s happening to you.”
“Fuck you, Trent.”
He quirked his lips, all disapproving, and shook his head. “Percocet withdrawal isn’t life-threatening, it just feels like it,” he said, his expression not changing.
“I wasn’t using again,” I snapped. “My knee hurt, it was pain relief.”
“Says the man who took so many tablets he lost his mind.”
“It was a mistake, and you know it.”
“They weren’t even your Percocet,” Trent said. He was being so fucking reasonable that my temper was spiraling. “Did you have to buy them off another player, or are they just handed out like sweets between you?”