by Damon Suede
I’ll do anything. Just ask me.
Griff sighed and looked at Nicole. She was doing classic smal-child eavesdropping, keeping her eyes straight forward and her ears wide open—a vacuum cleaner for garbled gossip. If they weren’t careful, the whole Anastagio brood would know Dante was in deep shit and Griff was involved.
Dante went to take Nicole’s hand again. “C’mon bug. Let’s go find some olives for your dad.”
Chapter 12
TWO days later, Griff was washing the engine, stuck on overtime so the lieutenant could head to the hospital to greet his new baby.
It was late and he needed sleep, but after two hours of trying to keep his eyes closed, he had come downstairs and helped refil the oxygen tanks, then sent the probie up to grab some Zs.
He’d been unable to close his eyes anywhere in the station for fear of who might find him and start confessing something awful. He had managed to steer clear of Tommy since the run-in at the bar, and he prayed he could split before the little paramedic showed up for his tour.
Dante barged right past him into the firehouse, jogging toward the stairs leading up to the bunk room.
“Hey.” Griff dropped the rag in the bucket and gave a mock salute.
“Why are you stil working?” Dante looked like he’d run a block, his hair windblown and his eyes coal-bright. “You weren’t answering your phone.”
“Sorry. We were out on a cal. Gas leak.” Griff shrugged and wiped his hands on his sweatshirt. “I covered a couple extra hours for Siluski. Wife finaly went into labor.”
Dante nodded and leaned against the truck. “It’s about the HotHead deal. I been thinking about how to close the gap with the bank.” Griff looked around at the racks of turnout gear and the door upstairs, paranoid.
“Extended activities!” His coal-dark eyes were bright with triumph.
“Dante! C’mon….” Griff tugged him around the rig and glanced at the dark street. Empty. Last thing they needed was anyone wandering in here and overhearing. The guys were al upstairs sacked out or watching ESPN. “I don’t think the house is the place—” Dante shook his head to dismiss the idea. “Don’t sweat it. C’mere.”
Griff let Dante lead him past the lockers and the rack of turnout gear toward the front and the street; they stepped out of the lights into the shadows outside the driveway entrance. He didn’t smoke, but this was the house’s unofficial smoking lounge. Cigarette butts littered the gutter where the other guys had flicked them. At least no one could sneak up on them.
Griff raised an eyebrow. “Okay. What?”
“Extended activities. The extra on-camera options. I realized something.” Dante’s eyes were shadowed like he hadn’t slept in a few days.
“Jesus, Dante.” Griff rubbed one eye roughly. He could feel a headache forming. “Maybe we can talk later—”
“No. Look, the mutual tug paid extra.” Dante mimed jerking and squirting without looking embarrassed, which only made Griff more embarrassed. “And the stuff you did at the end bumped our fee even—”
“I know, man. Sorry about—”
“—more. Bulshit, sorry! Blowing your jazz on me got us a three hundred dolar bonus. Didja know that?” Dante roled his eyes and waved away the worry.
“Dude, if I could get a fee every time you squirted on me, I’d camp under your bed and have you doing it three times a day.” Help me, Jesus.
Griff’s eyes honest-to-God bugged at that. He turned both ways to make sure the block was empty, then craned around to check the door leading upstairs to the kitchen and bunkroom. Al clear. He tried not to think about Dante volunteering to be his cum-rag.
He has to know what he’s doing to me, right?
“Do you realize that if I’d have just licked a little cream off my hands for Alek I could have gotten another five hundred dolars? I didn’t fuckin’ know! Five hundred dolars, G, just to taste your jazz for like a second!”
Griff choked, covered the choke with a cough, and choked again. He ran a slow hand over his heated face, trying to wipe the thought away before he fainted in the gutter.
Dante pounded his back, dead serious. “You know what I mean. Dude, if you’d have let me do the same we could’ve doubled our money. I could’ve paid the bank and come out ahead.”
“Uh. Yeah. And?”
“But that’s just the tip”—Dante grinned—“of the porno iceberg. So I was going over it in my head and then I was reading the contract. There could be a ton of extra money coming to us if we play it smart. Like, if we agree to certain extra extended activities, we get these bonuses. I think that’s the way you make real scratch on this porn star deal. Go the extra inch!”
Dante was pacing. Griff watched him, then dropped his voice to psych-ward calmness to reason with him.
“I don’t want a piece of rubber rammed in my ass just so you can get new countertops, Anastagio.” Griff ran a hand over his face in exasperation, frustration, and the crushing lust aroused by the idea. “So now you… what? You wiling to suck a load of jizz out of my chest hair? C’mon! Tel me another one.”
“Nah-nah-nah. We just have to be smart about it. Look….” Dante puled a crumpled HotHead contract out of his jacket. “There’s a whole list of things here.
I’m just saying let’s talk about it.”
“This is like prostitution—haggling over the tackle.” Griffin knew it was important to keep calm.
“I’m hardly a virgin.” Dante opened his arms and looked down at himself. “I done way worse for way less, believe me.”
“Doesn’t the idea freak you out, D? Us, together like that?”
“Why? It’s just us, man. We done everything together.”
“Not everything.” Griff was keeping an eye on the door at the back. He had a little imp on each shoulder, twin devils whispering sin into both ears.
Please let someone come down and stop him while I can still say no.
Please don’t let anyone come down here until I say yes.
Which was it? Some dark, terrible, hungry part of him wanted Dante to convince him, wanted Dante to force him so it wouldn’t be his fault.
“Wel, practicaly.” Dante stopped pacing to sit on the back of the rig. “We been naked together a thousand times, had sex in the same room, barfed on each other and washed each other and lost our minds together. Hel, as of a couple weeks ago, you’ve even busted your nut on my bare chest.”
“C’mon! You know that was an accident. I apologized—”
Dante exploded. “What’s the big deal?! I don’t fucking care! You’re my brother. You’re my best friend. You’re the only somebody I got.” Griff’s heart squeezed. Almost anything he said right now would be the wrong thing. “I know. I know.” What could it hurt? Oh yeah—everything.
Griff’s legs were already moving on their own, long strides back inside the station, past the truck. Dante’s footsteps clunked along behind him, keeping up.
Griff kept going, right through the doors into the grubby locker room. Griff headed to the row of showers and turned two on ful blast, hoping the noise would cover their conversation. He headed back to the bank of dented lockers.
Dante had sat down on the bench and was bent over the open HotHead contract looking for something; he wouldn’t look Griff in the eye. “Another five or six grand and I’d have a buffer with the bank. A fucking net under me! And we don’t have to sign up for a midget clown gangbang to get that.” Griff wasn’t buying it. “There are other ways for you to make—”
“Not realy. Not fast. I’m only saying, we could be smart.”
When he looked up at Griff his voice was steady and calm, like he was soothing a wounded dog. “HotHead has levels, like. Like a path for the models to do more each time. They already got a solo video from me, but I can opt to do other things. Go further.” Dante stood and put a tentative hand on Griff’s back. “If it’s too much for you to handle, I can let someone kinda rub me.”
“Like a massage.” The lump in Griff’s throat fe
lt like he’d swalowed an egg whole.
“Yeah. Or a blowjob even.”
Griff turned. “Wait. What happened to rub?!”
“Same diff: you just lie there and you don’t do nothing. It gets done to you.” Dante just kept watching him, calm as a cat, wearing him down with that hopeful half-smile. “Slick you up, get your nut, cash in hand, end of story.”
Was Dante realy asking him for this?
“They already have somebody that can do it? Rub you, I mean.” Griff’s stomach turned over and his mouth went dry. “Or is it Alek?” Or Tommy.
“I dunno. Does it matter? Would you want some creep juggling your eggs? Fuck that.” Griff flinched, and hated himself for flinching. He tried to process the idea of some other man touching Dante, having to watch that on the website because he couldn’t stop himself. He felt possessive rage rising in this throat until he was about to growl. He gritted his teeth to keep the savage sound inside him and sat very stil in the puddle of light over the lockers.
How can he not see what this does to me?
“But if I come along….”
“Then it’s just us.” Dante dropped his voice and leaned closer. “Otherwise it’s whoever he can find to do me. Another bum like me, I guess. I can’t ask anyone else, man. You’re it. You’re the net. After you I got concrete rushing up at me at 9.8 meters per second squared.” The shower stil hissed from the adjacent room, keeping their secrets from anyone who might overhear.
Dante misinterpreted his silence as disgust. “Look, you can just kick back. I’l do the stuff. The intense stuff, ya know. I could, ya know….” He looked at the floor. “Blow you a little.”
Griff’s brain whited out like snow on a TV with bad reception. It took a second to tune back in.
“A little? You make it sound… have you already agreed to this?” Griff turned to look at him.
“No!” Dante’s whole body pleaded for him. “I wanted to talk it through with you.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Griff’s voice was a rumble in his chest.
“Okay, G. Sorry.” He put his hands in his pockets and squinted in disappointment.
Help.
“No. I mean, I’l do it.” Griff closed his gray eyes. His pulse throbbed in his ears. “Look. You figure out what ‘extended’ stuff you’re wiling for us to do and that’s fine.” His eyes went to the closed door, grateful that his crew was passed out upstairs while he was having this bizarre conversation. “Whatever you think, okay?”
“And, like… kissing isn’t a big deal.” Dante’s eyes were huge and dry, like he hadn’t blinked in a week.
“Alek doesn’t mean a peck on the cheek, D. He means your tongue in my mouth, milking-my-junk, hickeys-and-gropes making out.” Griff focused on the stained concrete under his boots. The contract was open on the bench beside him. “They pay extra for making out?”
“Yeah. That doesn’t seem too nuts.” Dante pushed his midnight hair off his forehead.
Mother of God, this had to be some kind of test. Griff felt his mouth go bone dry.
“We already… I mean, what do I care if you stick your tongue in my mouth? It’s a couple hundred bucks. It doesn’t mean anything. Playing with nipples, same thing. I’ve pinched your tits before. And worse!”
“Yeah. In probie school, to piss me off. That’s not what he means.” Even though the concrete kept it chily in here, Griff felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of his scalp at the thought of kissing his best friend. His mouth was the Sahara.
Don’t lick your lips. Don’t lick your lips.
“Al I’m saying is, I think we can go further and pick up a bit more green.” Dante stood up again and leaned his back against someone’s locker. “I don’t want to have some random guy creeping on me, but if it’s you….” His eyes flicked back to Griff.
“Seriously? Think about it; it’s fucking weird.”
“Nah. It’s just us. It’s you. You could never be weird.” Serious face, low voice. Then right at him: “I love you, Griffin. You know that.” What does that mean? A spike of confusion went through Griff’s head and buried itself in his chest.
“Why can’t we give it a shot?” Dante reached a hand down to help him to his feet.
“What does that mean?!” The words slipped out of Griff’s mouth, and he wished he could pul them back inside.
What if he’s trying to tell me something? Then again, what if he isn’t?
Griff took the offered hand and stood up right into Dante’s personal space, almost touching. They stood so close he could feel warmth cooking off his best friend.
Dante didn’t step back, just pushed his cleft chin out like he was expecting a punch. “I’m not a pussy. Why, you gonna hurt me?” His hands bunched in his back pockets, his eyes everywhere they didn’t need to be. His face was a strange hybrid of terror and determination as he knocked their hips together. “C’mon, Griff, show me what you got.”
Dante’s swarthy fingers jerked over his friend’s heart, fingers on the front of Griff’s untucked shirt. One button opened under his fist. Another button. The whisper of Griff’s ginger chest hair against his undershirt. Dante’s hands were warm and shaking. Another button opened, and another, and another. Dante puled the shirttails loose and then tugged the undershirt up to reveal his abdomen, his hard pectorals.
“You don’t have to….”
Griff’s arms felt like wet lead; he couldn’t have moved them if he’d tried for fear he would crush Dante’s tentative exploration of his skin. Dante was watching him, and he could feel himself blushing, right there in his firehouse in front of the scuffed lockers and a Penthouse calendar from 2007. His face and his chest felt like they were getting a second-degree sunburn in a concrete locker room at eleven o’clock at night.
Dante leaned over his pale torso, running a tan hand over the the whorls of cinnamon hair until his rosy nipples tightened. Dante chuckled.
Griff gave him a look, copper brows wrinkled with a question. In the background the hiss of the shower muffled the room’s echo.
“So tiny.” Dante looked up at him with eyes black as volcanic glass. “Nipples. You’re so huge and they’re so smal.” His hands didn’t stop moving. “See?
It’s okay, Griff. It’s just fooling around, right?”
Griff nodded again, his tongue too thick for his mouth. His brain was scrambled eggs.
“Hey. Hey. You okay?” Dante’s breath matched his own, slow and deep.
“Yeah. It’s just a lot. You’re better at… sex than I am.”
“Nah.”
Griff felt unwieldy against him. Dante’s body was so sleek and proportioned, and Griff felt like a slab of bleached buffalo. He could feel the blush spread from his face down to his bely.
“I love that.” Dante’s teasing voice was a little husky.
Griff looked up, confused.
“When you blush like that. The way it moves across you. It’s like I can see what you’re feeling right where you’re feeling it. ’S’cool. Relax, G.”
“I just feel stupid.”
“Nah. It’s like cloud shadows from an airplane. These shapes moving over your skin and you’re not afraid of anything.”
“The fuck I’m not. It feels like being electrocuted slowly.”
“At least you can stil feel things, G. Stay with me.” A car honked outside, but Dante didn’t flinch, focused entirely on Griff’s shoulders and throat. Leaning closer, closer, and— oh God— rubbing that sooty stubble at the crook of Griff’s neck so that it sent shocks down his backbone. Dante was
— JesusMaryandJoseph— smeling him. Something wet on his neck, which had to be Dante’s tongue slipping out to taste the sweat. He hissed in surprise, and Dante puled back to look up.
Then those eyes, black as a judgment. Griff raised his hand and almost touched Dante’s face. Almost, but he stopped at the last moment, stunned by the heat and Dante’s vulnerable expression. Griff swalowed, swalowed again. He could feel his whole body brace
, the muscles like knotted rope. He heard himself murmuring, “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease….”
Dante leant closer, tipping his head back slightly, inviting him, daring him….
Take what you want.
Griff bent and grunted and his tongue pushed into the wet heaven of Dante’s mouth, and it wasn’t his heart that stopped; it was time.
I knew he would feel like this. I knew he would taste like this.
Griff pushed his hands up Dante’s back to take huge fistfuls of his glossy black mane, their teeth clicking together. Slow, wet, hungry kisses that went on and on.
Dante gave a grunt in the back of his throat, like surrender or hope, his mouth smoldering under Griff. There was no end to it. And it was like nothing he’d ever had.
The reality outstripped even his guilty, sticky dreaming. Dante’s arms around him were sturdier than he’d imagined, and more careful. Dante’s lips were softer, his hands rougher. Griff hadn’t expected the feeling of two hairy chests, two shaved faces, two work-hard bodies straining against each other right in the firehouse. And God did Dante smel sweet and strong: like figs and leather and something burning.
So different from Leslie. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. A tear ran out of his stinging eye.
With ladies, Griff was always so afraid he’d break them. Sex with his wife had been a series of careful intrusions that ended in a cautious, happy squirt folowed by a quick rinse ’cause she didn’t like the mess. Leslie spent years trying to coax him into experimenting and letting go and getting freaky, but he’d lived in terror of hurting her, of pushing her too far, of breaking her open with his beer-can dick. He wasn’t a monster. His wanting was so big and she was so tiny.
Not Dante. Dante was a great, glossy beast. So strong, so strong that even now he was lifting Griffin off the ground as they struggled closer. Their cocks smashed together with a shivery ache that radiated outward, soaking through him sunrise warm.
Every inch of Griff vibrated and sang like a plucked bass. His scalp tingled and his hands itched and where their hot skin pressed, the soft slick slip of their muscles over each other was so sweet that he thought he would actualy cry out. Under his pants, his erection was like granite against his hip.