by Tinnean
But why would she have Novotny drop off a package for me?
“Listen, I’ve gotta get back. Wills was making noises about teaching me the error of being so trusting.” Theo shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, pulling the material snug over his groin, unintentionally drawing attention to the bulge there.
It was obvious that he wouldn’t mind in the least doing whatever it took to get Matheson into a better mood. In fact, it appeared he was looking forward to it.
He strolled out into the hall, winking at me over his shoulder.
I shook my head again. The agent and the rent boy. It almost sounded like bad gay porn.
I shut the door behind him, secured it, then turned to study the box on the floor.
VI
WHEN I was satisfied that it contained nothing lethal, I took out a pen knife and slit the brown paper wrapping. An envelope was taped to the top of the box. I opened it and removed the sheet of pale-green writing paper.
My dear Mark,
This is nowhere near what my son’s life is worth to me, but I hope you will accept it as a small token of my deepest gratitude.
Portia Mann
Well, fuck me sideways with a soupspoon. It was a top-of-the-line DVD player.
There was more writing under the elegant curlicues of her signature.
PS I don’t presume to know your taste in movies, but the one I’ve enclosed was one of my husband’s favorites. It isn’t available to the general public at this time. I hope you’ll enjoy watching it with my son.
I picked up the slim, plastic case with the image of John Wayne in a battered cowboy hat. At his heels was a scruffy mongrel.
“Sam.”
I put the case on the coffee table and set about hooking up the DVD player.
Vincent on My Mind
I
I SAT on my couch, gazing into space, my cock in my hand. I wasn’t interested in coming. Not yet.
The chimes of the clock on my living room wall sounded sweetly, and I glanced up at it, watching as the pendulum swung back and forth, ticking off the seconds.
Mark was running late.
We’d agreed he would have dinner with me this evening and spend the night. Perhaps he’d stopped by his apartment to pick up a change of clothing?
I didn’t want to think that he’d simply grown tired of what we had and might be seeking ways to put some distance between us. He’d done that once before, using the excuse of his mother’s funeral to leave town, and I’d gone after him.
If necessary, I’d go after him again.
I smiled wryly.
I had a reputation for being not only cool under fire, but emotionally… chilly. The Ice Man, I was called. No one knew there were fires under the surface, banked now but waiting for an excuse to burn hotly.
No one except a certain WBIS agent, who’d had the audacity to cuff me to my bed, go down on me, giving me a mind-blowing orgasm, and then growl in my ear, “You need to be kissed. Long and often and by someone who knows how.”
I would have taunted him about that, but the fact of the matter was that Mark Vincent certainly knew how.
Was he surprised to discover that I also knew how, knew when to tilt my head, when to stroke the back of his neck with caressing fingertips, when to nibble his lower lip or sigh into his mouth?
I’d learned in France, in 1980.
We would have met that year, Mark and I, if the United States hadn’t refused to participate in the Summer Olympics. The administration decided to take an uncompromising stand on the USSR invading Afghanistan and boycotted the summer games, which were being held in Moscow.
Not many people knew Mark was an Olympic-class fencer.
I hadn’t. I’d thought he was just a dilettante until I’d finally pushed him too far, and he’d agreed to a match at the academy where I practiced on occasion.
He offered to use foils, but I was familiar with the épée, that being the sword of choice in the Pentathlon, and I’d teased, “Afraid I’ll take you with your own weapon, Mark?”
By the time the bout was over, I was sweating and panting and more than pleased to call it a draw. The only thing that kept me from breaking my épée over my knee for such a gross misjudgment of his skill—aside from the knowledge that such an act could very well result in the breaking of my knee—was the fact that Mark was breathing heavily also. I should have realized how good he was after the time we’d gone out to dinner and I’d challenged him to a duel with our breadsticks. He’d beaten me then, but I’d assumed it was a fluke, especially since the move he’d used to disarm me was illegal.
He had been selected for the Olympic fencing team, and I was the youngest member of the equestrian team that would have ridden the Three Day Event.
A smile curled my lips, and I continued stroking my cock just enough to keep it hard.
We didn’t meet that year. But if things had been different….
While I waited for him to come home, I thought of how it might have been.
II
I FOUND girls interesting, but treated them with the same innate courtesy I’d seen my father extend to my mother.
Of course I experimented a bit, even having a short interlude with an older woman, who at sixteen was more experienced. She attended private school, as did I, although fortunately not the same one, for it didn’t end well. She didn’t seem to value the care I wanted to lavish on her and had become impatient, cutting my lip with her braces.
Distastefully, I realized why it was sometimes called swapping spit.
And, disappointed, I decided kissing was vastly overrated.
Mother looked at my puffy mouth, arched an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Gregor looked at my puffy mouth, grinned, and cuffed me proudly on the shoulder.
I didn’t tell him that Diana had broken up with me, and how relieved I had been.
I found myself covertly watching the boys who attended the same school as I, discovering that they were the ones who made me grow hard, who made me want to lose control.
I never did, though. Mother had taught me well; even at that age I knew I had to guard my actions carefully.
However, there in the Olympic Village, that microcosm of the real world, I saw someone who could tempt me to go further.
A fencer named Mark Vincent.
Taller than I, and with rather prominent ears, although I couldn’t see anyone calling him Dumbo. He had a whipcord-lean body, and I watched him unobtrusively during his practice bouts, admiring the iron control he wielded over that sword, as if it were an extension of his body.
I was sure that he was if not gay, then bi. I’d observed him flirting blatantly with the Swedish swordsman, and I’d wondered if he was really attracted to the man, or if he was simply attempting to shake his confidence….
I paused in the feathering touches along the length of my cock and laughed to myself.
No, no one would call him Dumbo, not if they hoped to live.
And of course my lover would be trying to throw the Swede off-balance. Otherwise he’d have been discreet, and no one did discreet like Mark Vincent.
I was assigned a room with Sam Barton and Harry Tremain, who were the senior members of the equestrian team. They treated me as an equal as long as we were on horseback, but I was ten years younger. As soon as the horses were stabled for the night, they would leave the Olympic Village and go into town to pick up one of the many girls who hung around hoping to hook up with a runner or a swimmer, but willing to settle for steeplechase and dressage.
I imagined they quickly learned that beneath the jodhpurs and prissy-looking jackets were muscles that had been developed controlling a thousand-pound animal. Even Jack Be Nimble, the sweet-tempered horse I would be riding, could be mettlesome on occasion.
My parents had purchased the roan gelding for my eighth birthday. Father wasn’t a horseman, and he had questioned the wisdom of giving me a mount who measured fifteen hands when I was still a good deal shorter than that.<
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“Never let outward appearances deter you, darling.” Mother had smiled and run the backs of her fingers against his cheek. “I have every confidence that Quinton will be well able to handle Jack Be Nimble.”
He’d taken her hand and brought it to his mouth. “Then I’m sure you won’t be proved wrong, darling.”
And of course she wasn’t.
It took a lot of hard work to get to the Olympics, and now it looked as if we stood a good chance of bringing home a medal. Jack Be Nimble was all heart and gave me everything I asked of him. He deserved to take a place in the annals of the Olympic record books.
I’d been schooling him in some dressage movements, and I looked to the end of the ring to see if the coach was satisfied. Vincent was lounging against the railing behind him, his eyes on me, and my mouth went dry and I grew hard. My grip tightened involuntarily on the reins, confusing my horse, because while my hands were telling him whoa, my heels were telling him go.
The coach didn’t seem to notice, but Vincent had a little smile on his face.
“Sorry, Jack,” I whispered. I raised my hands and lifted him into a standing trot. He gave a flick of his tail and began to move elegantly in place.
I stole covert glances at Vincent; he seemed to be fascinated with the way I sat my English saddle and the way Jack Be Nimble’s girth spread my thighs. I licked my lips, wondering what it would be like to have his hands spreading my thighs.
I wasn’t certain he would accept my advances, if only because of the age factor; I had learned he was several years older than I.
“Half-pass, Mann!” the coach called, and forcing my attention back to my horse, I shifted my weight and sent him trotting forward and sideways across the tanbark, unable to resist showing off a bit.
III
“MANN, Harry and I are meeting a couple of girls in town.” Barton came out of the bathroom, zipping his jeans and smoothing back his hair. “We’re having dinner with them.”
I looked up from the boot I was polishing. “Just don’t make an all-nighter out of it, Barton. The first rounds start early tomorrow.”
The corner of his mouth curved. “Don’t worry. This is important to us too. We’ll be back before midnight.”
They left, joking about showing the girls what very excellent riders they were.
Mention of dinner made me realize how long it had been since lunch. I stood my boot beside its partner beneath my riding togs in the small closet, and then washed my hands and went down to the communal dining hall.
We served ourselves buffet style, and I piled my tray with a bowl of borscht, a plate of boeuf Stroganov, some rye bread, and a bottle of Coke, and found an empty table. As I raised my spoon to my mouth, I suddenly had the feeling I was being watched. I let my gaze wander, but was unable to spot who it might be.
At the next table sat the fencing team, however, and I did spot Mark Vincent lounging negligently among them. He glanced over and saw me staring, and he winked.
I battled to keep the blush from rising in my cheeks and simply gave him a polite nod.
He straightened, and for a second I thought he was going to join me, but then someone at his table drew his attention, and he turned back to them.
Of course, I was too young to be of any interest to him. I dipped my spoon into my borscht and pretended to find my dinner more fascinating than the young man at the next table.
I envied his relaxed posture as he listened to someone begin to tell a slightly ribald story about a convent full of Irish nuns next door to a construction site. His hazel eyes were alight with humor.
“So finally, the construction worker says, ‘Look, Sister, my men call a spade a spade.’ And the nun says to him, ‘Ah, no, they call it a fuckin’ shovel’!”
I’d been about to tip the bottle of soda to my lips, but fortunately I’d paused; otherwise I’d have been spewing Coca-Cola out of my nose. As it was, I choked on a gasp of laughter.
“Breathing Coke’s not a good idea. Good thing you waited.” Vincent crossed the small space that separated the tables and handed me a napkin.
“Thank you.” I took it, shivering at the feel of his fingers brushing against mine, then set my hand on the table so he wouldn’t see it tremble with the sudden flash of desire that had swept through me.
“So, think your team can beat the Russians?” Hazel eyes smiled down into mine.
“We’ll try our best.” I smiled back at him coolly. “Do you think you can beat the Swede?” I expected him to parrot my words back at me.
“Yes.”
“You’re very confident.”
“Vincent’s the best,” one of the other fencers mocked, a discontented look in his eyes.
“Are you really?” I asked softly, and I wasn’t thinking solely of his skill with an épée.
Vincent shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Hey, Vincent, you robbin’ the cradle now?” another teammate teased, and it wasn’t kind. “He’s got a sweet-lookin’ mouth, I’ll give you that. If you close your eyes, you could pretend he was a girl.”
“Fuck you, Miller.” Vincent didn’t seem too disturbed—he was smiling—but when he turned to look at his friend, the man went pale and shut up.
“I thought we were on the same side.” My appetite gone, I pushed my chair back and stood. “Good luck.” I brought my tray to the window in the dish room and quietly left the dining hall.
Glumly, I decided I might as well check on Jack Be Nimble. It wouldn’t hurt to curry him while I was at it. I wanted him looking his best in the morning, and it would soothe both of us.
IV
I LED my gelding out of his stall and looped the lead on his halter to a ring that was placed at a comfortable height on one of the stable supports. When we’d come in from the exercise ring earlier in the afternoon, I thought I’d detected a little heat in his near foreleg. The last thing I wanted was for my mount to pull up lame before the first round of jumps, but the Olympic vet had checked him out and found nothing, and Jack’s leg seemed fine now.
I took his brush and curry comb, pushed his dark mane to the other side of his neck, and began to work on the side nearest me. Jack loved being groomed and stood in a hip slouch, his eyes half closed, occasionally flicking his tail or stamping a hoof. His ears swiveled to catch the Ray Charles tune I hummed softly.
“So this is where you wound up.”
I dropped the brush and comb and brought my hands up to protect myself.
“Hey, easy, baby!” It was Vincent.
I lowered my hands. “Sorry.” I hadn’t even heard him come into the stable. Father would have been disappointed in me.
He had started teaching me self-defense, and after he’d been killed when that Air India jetliner crashed, Mother had continued with my lessons. Everyone thought she was the untouchable ice queen, and that was how she wanted it, but she had a past which she was only now sharing with me. Not only had she worked on deciphering Russian codes during Project Venona in the late fifties, but she knew how to protect herself with her bare hands, as well as with a variety of weapons.
I could feel the heat in my cheeks again. “I thought I was alone.”
“Obviously. Why’d you take off like that? I wanted to talk to you more.”
“Your friends seemed to have a problem with me.”
“Those assholes? They’re not my friends. I don’t have friends.”
He’d probably resent it if I said that was sad, so instead I heard myself saying, “Miller wants to be. If you gave him half a chance, I have no doubt he’d want to be more than your friend.” Had the blood in my brain taken up residence in my cock? I never spoke of such personal things with people I didn’t know. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not? It’s probably true.”
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“What? That someone wants me to get in his pants? Or that you were sharp enough to pick up on it?”
The former, but I couldn’t tell him that.
“That people might think you’re gay,” I obfuscated.
He hunched a shoulder. “They can think whatever they want. It’s no skin off my nose.”
“But if they beat you up—”
“Oh, they could try. That’s not to say they’d succeed.”
“You’re that sure of yourself?”
“Like Hudson said, I’m the best.”
“Are you really?” Was that husky voice mine? Mortified, I rushed to say, “I’m sorry. That’s not my business.”
“I don’t mind.” He stepped close to me and brushed the lock of hair that tended to fall in my eyes back off my forehead, and I shivered. “Tell me something, baby—”
“Quinton.” That was the second time he’d called me baby. The last thing I wanted was him seeing me as a child. “My name is Quinton.”
“I know. You’re Quinton Mann. What do your friends call you?”
“They call me Quinton. And why did you call me ‘baby’? I’m not your girlfriend—”
“No, you’re definitely not a girl.”
“Or your boyfriend,” I continued resolutely, thinking of the Swedish fencer. And Miller.
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” My expression must have been disbelieving. He just smiled and shook his head. “Maybe I should have said I never felt the need for a boyfriend. Before now. Tell me something… Quinn. If I try to kiss you, will that earn me a punch in the mouth?”
“If I said ‘yes’, would it make a difference?” My lips parted, and I was breathless.
“What would you do if I said it wouldn’t?” His eyes were on my mouth.
I shrugged, swallowed, and took a step toward him.