Drawn Together

by Z. A. Maxfield

  Yamane appeared to be at a loss. “No one -- hardly anyone -- ever asks me that.”

  “Forget it then, if it doesn’t appeal. I just thought, maybe --” Rory resumed his exploration of Yamane’s creamy skin.

  “Rory, stop,” Yamane said finally. “I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, and I don’t top very often. I told you, people have preconceived notions. I want to --”

  “Ah, cher.” Rory pulled Yamane to him, dying to feel him skin to skin. “Some seducer of innocents you turned out to be.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Yamane.” Rory captured Yamane’s face and held it between his palms. “I love you, and I trust you. Do you want to share that part of yourself with me?”

  “Yes.” Yamane grinned. “Oh, hell yes.” He pushed Rory down onto his back, and his hand traveled to Rory’s zipper.

  “Then do it,” Rory told him. “I want you to do it.”

  34

  Whatever Rory expected after having made his daring offer, it wasn’t the slow, lazy seduction Yamane was treating him to now. Yamane divested Rory of each remaining stitch of his clothing and was now, literally, examining, tasting, and playing with every square inch of his body. Rory thought he would die from the sheer sweet torture of it.

  “Are you trying to put off the inevitable? Honestly…if you’re not into this --” He felt a hand firmly close over his mouth.

  “Shh, love. I’m taking a self-guided tour.” He swept a hand down between them to stroke Rory’s balls, and Rory gasped and closed his eyes.

  “Do we have to have the lights on?”

  “Yes.” Yamane slipped his tongue into Rory’s belly button and swept it down the light line of hair that led to the triangular tuft of wiry red hair that grew over his cock. He teased Rory’s erection lightly with his lips and tongue, and Rory jerked up off the bed in response. Yamane laughed lightly.

  Rory felt him leave the bed for a moment, and when he came back, he was naked and carried a toiletry bag. In seconds, his mouth was on Rory again and Rory’s mind went blank. Rory felt a finger tease around his hole, circling, sliding, moving, but never quite entering. He strained toward it, wanting Yamane to touch him in that most intimate of places.

  The finger, slick with lube, finally surged past the barrier of strong muscle, then played, entering and leaving him until he wanted to see what would happen if it went deeper. He pushed toward it, and it slipped in farther. He liked this game, a duel of sorts between his body and Yamane. The finger found its way in deeper until it was joined by another. Yamane maneuvered it around --

  “Whoa!” Rory jerked. “Oh, that!”

  “What? Was that good or was that bad?” Yamane grinned at him.

  “Oh, good.”

  “Ah.” Sweat started to bead on Yamane’s brow, and the hair next to his face became damp as he continued.

  Rory moved between his mouth and his fingers, growing mindless with pleasure. “Oh,” said Rory with wonder, thrashing against Yamane’s hand. “How come it feels like that?”

  “Later,” Yamane ground out. “Anal 101 later.” He licked Rory’s balls, tugging them, pushing his face into Rory’s thighs and stroking his cock with his free hand. “Okay, Rory?”

  “Mm…” Rory gripped the sheets. “Yes, damn…”

  Yamane removed his fingers, and Rory felt empty. He watched as Yamane rolled a condom on his thick, uncut cock, and gasped as a dollop of cold lube hit the skin of his perineum. Yamane’s fingers returned to work the lube into his hole, and Rory sighed with pleasure. He let out a strangled cry when Yamane touched his prostate again.

  Rory took a deep breath as he moved and stretched to accommodate Yamane’s fingers. He wanted to take Yamane into his body completely; he wanted Yamane to break him open and tear him apart.

  Rory stopped Yamane with a hand on his. “I want you in me.”

  Yamane hovered over him for the briefest of moments. He kissed Rory deeply on the lips, his tongue probing the younger man’s mouth. He hesitated at the entrance of Rory’s body, rocking and nudging against Rory’s hole until Rory knew he’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted Yamane’s cock up his ass.

  “Yamane.” Rory wasn’t too proud to beg.

  “Open for me,” Yamane said, lifting Rory’s leg with a surprisingly strong forearm. “Here I come, love.” He pushed his way in. “Okay?”

  Rory nodded and concentrated on breathing as he was being filled, expanded, and sometimes, it felt, exploded by Yamane’s body. Once he was in, Rory moved experimentally, shifting his hips a little, watching Yamane’s face. He wanted to taste Yamane, to devour him. He reached up and roughly pulled Yamane down for a deep, searching kiss. Yamane’s slick tongue stroked over his, and he felt Yamane everywhere, over him, inside him, surrounding him with heat and scent and man.

  Yamane slipped back slightly, driving into Rory at a different angle.

  Rory’s head dropped back and he uttered a grunt that sounded savage even to his own ears. “That…that!” He grunted again. “Do. That. Again.”

  The hair around Yamane’s face was damp with sweat and his breath came in gasps as Rory felt his fine ass pump that uncut cock into him like a piston. Yamane’s tight abs brushed Rory’s dick against his body, the friction smoothed by Rory’s precum and his sweat. He felt blood rise beneath his skin all across his chest and face as he soared in his lover’s arms.

  “Yamane.” Rory panted, fisting the sheets on the hotel bed. “There, oh harder.”

  Rory felt himself slide over the edge. His entire body tightened, his senses exploded, and he felt a hot splash of cum travel over his belly and chest. “Yamane,” he whispered, as he gave himself over completely. “Yamane…”

  * * *

  Yamane watched as orgasm washed over Rory’s features. His lover’s eyes went out of focus as his back arched until his body jumped and shuddered and clenched around Yamane’s cock. Warm, sticky wetness flowed between their bellies as Rory clamped around him like a vise. Yamane thought that was the most erotic thing he’d ever felt.

  The aftershocks of Rory’s orgasm continued as Yamane plummeted into his own. Yamane’s muscles stopped working as he poured himself into Rory’s ass, and he slipped onto Rory’s body with an inelegant flop.

  Still gasping for what seemed like a long time, he carefully pulled out, removing the condom and tossing it aside. Even that seemed to waken every nerve ending on his skin as he clutched Rory’s body to him, feeling every hair, bone, and muscle scrape and bump and flex beneath him.

  Yamane opened his eyes and found Rory watching him. He slid up that big, slippery body to lick and kiss away the sad expression on Rory’s face. As they fell asleep together, Yamane pressed his cheek and body close to Rory’s as if there were too much air, too much space, and too much skin between them.

  When the sunlight finally teased him awake, Yamane discovered that Rory had been to the bakery while he slept. He and Rory ate pastries, drank coffee, and licked crumbs off each other. “Rory, I have to go to New York,” began Yamane.

  “Really, when?” Rory seemed surprised and not a little disappointed.

  “Tonight,” said Yamane. “I’m promoting an art book, so I have to go for that. I’ll do some cable talk shows and Internet chat rooms and then a gallery show. I’ve never exhibited paintings. It’s new for me.”

  “That’s great, isn’t it?”

  “I wish you could go with me,” Yamane admitted.

  “I start school the first week in August. That’s only a couple of weeks away. I’ll have to find an apartment that takes dogs and move, but I’ll come see your exhibit if I can. I’m not too fond of New York. You’ll have to promise me I’ll see as little of it as possible.”

  “I’ll only show you the finest hotel ceilings.” Yamane smiled, but then it faded quickly. “You don’t think that’s all we have, though, do you?”

  “No, but maybe it’s all we get… I don’t kno
w.” Rory sighed. “If that’s all we get, we’ll make it enough, won’t we?” He put his head on Yamane’s chest.

  “Yes,” said Yamane resolutely. “Yes, we will.”

  35

  Yamane kept his eyes closed for most of the flight, but he didn’t sleep. When the plane landed, he was almost the first to get off. There was a long wait until his baggage started slipping down onto the carousel, during which Yamane watched the other travelers as they chatted up their families or greeted friends.

  Yamane was lonely. And maybe, he thought, it was a deeper loneliness than he’d ever experienced, even in his solitary world. His life had been populated by business acquaintances and hit-and-run lovers. No one had ever opened him up to the possibility that the kind of love he’d never experienced would feel this good. He’d mocked romantic love. He’d been raised by a single mother whose only value to his father was her beauty. He’d scorned emotional attachment and sentimentality as a construct of weaker and less sophisticated people. People like Amelia, who were driven mad by that kind of nonsense.

  Now Yamane had a notion of what it was like to live as part of a family, and though it had never seemed important before, he was beginning to long for it acutely. He wondered what it would be like to know that someone was always there for him, like Euphonia, who had some second sight and walked serenely to the porch long before there was any indication that Rory would be coming up the drive.

  Yamane’s cab dropped him off at New York Palace Hotel, where the impeccable staff immediately saw to his luggage. He went through the process of registration in hushed tones, awed by the rich and unspeakably elegant hotel entrance. Later, gazing at the beautifully appointed guest room, Yamane remembered some positively awful rooms he’d stayed in with Rory. He hung up his clothes and took his toiletries to the glistening marble bath. He’d grown up in luxury, attended a posh private high school, lived an elegant and understated life in his mother’s traditional Japanese-style country home, but right now, he wished he were sitting on a blanket in front of a campfire with Rory. Yamane didn’t bother removing his clothes, but smoked a cigarette and stared at the amazing view from his hotel room window. Later, he fell asleep in the chair.

  He woke up disoriented when his cell phone rang. “I’m here,” he said. “Hai, moshi-moshi, Ran desu,” he added, wondering if it was his agent.

  “Rory to moushimasuga, Ran-sensei wo onegaishimasu,” said Rory.

  “What the hell, Rory? Where’d you learn to speak Japanese?”

  “Internet,” said Rory. “But that’s all I know so far. As you probably know, I have a facility with foreign tongues. You promised you’d call.”

  Yamane relaxed against the chair, loving the sound of Rory’s thick accent in his ear.

  “Gomen-nasai,” he said, “I’m sorry. I fell asleep. What time is it?”

  “Here in Louisiana, it’s time for a little something we like to call phone sex,” said Rory, purring into the phone. “Would you like to know what I’m wearing?”

  Yamane lit a cigarette, hoping the telltale snick couldn’t be heard. “Yes,” he answered, loving this irrepressible boy/man more than ever. “Tell me.”

  “I heard that. You’re supposed to quit.”

  “Okay, I’ll quit.” Yamane leaned back and took a shameless drag off his cigarette. “Now tell me. Use that nasty southern accent of yours to tell me what you’re wearing, Rory.”

  “Well, I’m wearing big, floppy shoes that are so long I can hardly walk, and they make a slapping sound,” Rory began, his voice a lifeline to Yamane. “And baggy polka-dotted pants, held up by thick…soft…and fuzzy red suspenders…”

  36

  Rory looked around at the students assembling in his first-ever class as a teaching assistant. He took his notes and the textbook out of his messenger bag and used a black dry- erase marker to write his name on the whiteboard. This was a simple foreign language class for first-year French students, the most basic class in the department except conversational French. He was glad to teach this one, and always thought he’d be good at it because teaching solely in French to students who didn’t know the language yet required a great deal of mime and exaggerated hand gestures, and he liked to clown around. He blushed, thinking of his obscene clown call to Yamane. Rory cleared his throat and busied himself with papers.

  Several students arrived just as the bell rang, and Rory began class, handing out three- by-five cards to each row to be passed back until everyone had one. He began speaking, hearing a groan or two from the back when they realized he would be using only French, and began to describe what each student should be writing on his or her card.

  “Première,” he said, writing the numeral “1” down on the board, “votre nom et prénom.” He wrote “last name, first name” on the board and pointed to each one, using the French term for it until he thought the students would know what to write on their cards.

  “Bon. Alors, votre adresse et numéro de telephone,” he added, for lines two and three, and went over those again in French, pointing to the English equivalents as he wrote the next item on the board. A ripple of sound washed over him that had nothing to do with the French words for telephone number and address, so he turned to see what had caused such a stir. He looked up to see Yamane walking regally to the front of the class in one of his little black coats, his long hair loose and his sunglasses perched on the tip of his nose. Rory tried to hide his reaction as Yamane sauntered to the teacher’s desk, then placed the largest, shiniest red apple Rory had ever seen on it.

  “Priez de vous m’excuser,” Yamane said. “Continuez.” He sat down in the third row, and one of the students handed him a card.

  It was a contest to see who was more disturbed by Yamane’s appearance in his class, Rory or his students. They had clearly never seen anything like Yamane in their lives. Leaving aside his physical beauty, he had a way of sitting and just swinging his foot that called the attention of every person in the room. At one point, one of his shoes balanced precariously on the end of his toes, and the entire class seemed spellbound by it, breathlessly waiting for it to fall, which it did. Yamane slipped it back on, to the satisfied sigh of the people around him, looking just a little flustered to be the center of so much attention.

  The little shit, thought Rory, smiling to himself.

  By the end of the class period, Rory, satisfied that each of his students knew his or her name and how to say it in French along with a smattering of other nouns, said à bientôt to his class and started packing things up to leave. Those students who had petitions for him to sign waited patiently for their turn as he spoke to each one individually. Finally, he was left in the room with his unrepentant third-row troublemaker, and a few students who watched curiously to see what would happen between them.

  “I’d kiss you senseless in front of all these leering teenagers,” said Rory under his breath, “but you don’t deserve it. Why didn’t you tell me you were in town? I’d have picked you up from the airport.” He and Yamane ambled out into the warm late summer day and walked together.

  “I didn’t know I’d be here this soon,” said Yamane. “But things happened faster than I thought in New York and I had a break, so here I am.”

  “I’m delighted.” Rory hugged him and threw an arm around his shoulder. “Daiki will be thrilled; he’s missed you.”

  “Right, the dog missed me,” said Yamane. “I’ve got some shopping to do, but I wanted to know what time you finish up here; I thought maybe we could go somewhere for dinner or something.”

  “You have to see my apartment,” said Rory. “It’s awful, but it takes dogs. How about I make dinner? I’ll call you at, say, five? Then I’ll pick up Daiki and meet you wherever you are, okay?”

  “Sure,” said Yamane. “I’ll be waiting.” Rory walked Yamane to the visitor parking lot and waited while he got into his rental car. Yamane waved brightly as he drove away.

  Rory spent the rest of the day in happy anticipation. A surprise visit fr
om Yamane seemed too good to be true. He had eaten that enormous apple at lunchtime, laughing as he remembered the dazed looks his students gave him when he and Yamane had left together.

  He worried that his apartment, so much poorer than what Yamane was used to, would be a big letdown, and decided that if he knew Yamane was coming in the future he might rent a room in one of the nicer hotels. With a little planning, he could leave Daiki with his grandmère.

  Above all, he wanted Yamane to want to come back, and not to dread the inconvenience of the unattractive apartment he would endure when he visited. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of that before. Poor motels were a fact of the road, but having nothing better to offer Yamane in his home made him feel kind of sad.

  By the time he called Yamane, he had worked himself into such a state of nerves that Yamane had trouble understanding him.

  “Rory, what are you saying? Aren’t you going to pick up Daiki and fix us some dinner? Isn’t that what you said?”

  “Yes, but I thought, since you’re visiting, maybe we should leave Daiki with Mrs. Stephens, who is watching him, and go to a hotel or something, you know. Nicer than my place.”

  “Nicer? What’s wrong with your place?” Yamane sounded tired. “Why leave Daiki with someone else?”

  “My place is a total dive,” admitted Rory. “I didn’t think about it till you left. You’ll hate it. I’ll feel bad bringing you there.”

  “Are my lover and my puppy going to be there?”

  “Yeah,” said Rory, “but --”

  “No buts; I want you to meet me at this address.” He gave Rory an address in east Baton Rouge. “I’ll be waiting. Bring my dog, or don’t bother coming.”

  “Your dog!” Rory said, but Yamane had already hung up. “His dog,” he added, to no one in particular.

  Rory went to the department offices to MapQuest the address Yamane had given him, wondering what the heck Yamane was doing way out there. He printed the page and went to get his truck, the long walk easing the tension in his shoulders a little. Sooner or later, Rory was afraid Yamane would get his fill of his pedestrian life. It might begin with his apartment or his job, thought Rory, but would include his summers working at the Ragin’ Cajun and his grandparents’ manufactured home. He might even meet Rory’s mother and stepfather and decide that it was fun to visit Rory’s world, but he wouldn’t want to live there. All those things were fine in a knight but spelled doom for any kind of wannabe prince.