Fishy Queen (Drag Queen Beauty Pageant Book 2)

by Malachite Splinters

  “His name is Anthony,” I interrupted.

  “I’ll put you on the bill,” DT ignored me completely. “We’ll do a walk through on Thursday afternoon if they can get out of work. No dress rehearsal. I had to close again tonight to come watch y’all, I can’t do that again.”

  “You closed!” I exclaimed in horror. “DT, why can’t you have someone else be there?”

  “I’m not talking to you any more,” DT said, picking up his cup of coffee and nibbling on his cookie. “Goodnight.”

  I sat there for a few more seconds and then I got up and left without saying a word to him.

  I came in the door as quietly as I could, not wanting to alert Anthony to my presence if he was home. For all I knew, he had found Clarion again, sent 80s packing and gone home with him.

  I sat down at the kitchen table, opened my laptop and resumed the work I had started doing this morning. I was getting so behind, every time I thought about it I started getting anxiety. This was extremely unlike me, I was a very proactive person and never got behind on my responsibilities.

  I tried to concentrate, but everything that had happened tonight and earlier today kept whirling through my mind.

  The tick of the clock on the wall was the only noise I could hear apart from the tapping of the keys on the keyboard.

  Until I became aware of another sound.

  Thumping.

  A rhythmic thumping as if someone was pounding on a wall or a floor. I got up and went to the living room, thinking it was the neighbors pounding on the ceiling again like they had the other night when I had been doing some late-night dancing.

  But it wasn’t coming from downstairs.

  It was coming from the bedroom. The spare bedroom. Now Anthony’s bedroom. And it got louder, and more forceful and my eyes opened wide as I realized what the sound was.

  It was the sound of a bed headboard banging against the wall. I covered my mouth with my hand. Anthony was—he had—

  He had brought Clarion Call here?

  To my apartment?

  And was having sex with him in my spare bedroom?

  As if in confirmation, a primal moan rent the air and made the hairs stand up all over my body.

  I took a step back, shock freezing my reaction, quickly replaced by outrage.

  I had a mind to—

  I didn’t know what—

  And then another moan, which resolved itself into a familiar sound, that sent a shockwave through me as if I had just been electrified by fifty thousand bolts—

  “Machyl—”

  My hand was on the back of a straight-backed chair that the kitchen was too small to fit, and I pulled it down so it crashed to the floor and the noise reverberated though the small apartment.

  Utter silence followed.

  I stood there, my heart thumping like the bed against the wall, and looked at the light around Anthony’s bedroom door. I was one step away from going and knocking on the door. One step away.

  But I didn’t. I walked, but I walked to my bedroom, and went inside and closed the door.

  I sat there on the edge of the bed staring at the wall until I couldn’t stand it any more.

  And then I got up and got in the shower and got under icy cold water and gasped and puffed while I tried to clean myself, clean everything away, wishing I could reach inside and clean out the toxic sludge I had found there, but I didn’t know how and I didn’t see how I could change anything.

  I rinsed off and got out, toweled off and wrapped it around my waist and started my skin care routine.

  There was a knock on the door.

  I started so badly and froze as if it was a ghost that had come knocking. When I opened it, my hand shook.

  “I need to brush my teeth,” Anthony stepped inside wearing that robe Angel had left behind, and met my eyes boldly.

  I couldn’t speak. I stepped back to give him room and he went between me and the sink and started brushing his teeth. I tried not to look at him, I just applied my moisturizer and stayed back against the shower.

  But then I realized he was looking at me in the mirror and our eyes met. He was standing in front of me just like he had been on the dance floor, all it would take to close the distance would be me stepping forward and pinning him against the sink.

  He ducked his head down, spit and rinsed his mouth, and stepped away from the sink and leaned against the bathroom door, closing it with his back, which made me feel suddenly claustrophobic.

  “Is Luka okay?”

  I had just put my toothbrush in my mouth, so I just turned and nodded, then started brushing.

  “Will he be able to perform?”

  I shrugged. I highly doubted it, but I didn’t have definite confirmation.

  I was trying to keep my focus on these mundane details. Trying to just focus on the smooth, shiny, flexible plastic of the bottle of moisturizer. Or the squishy easy-grip toothbrush handle. Or the pungent, Christmassy taste of the wintergreen toothpaste.

  But it wasn't working.

  I rinsed my mouth out and wiped it on the hand towel next to the sink.

  He was still there, blocking the door.

  I turned and leaned against the sink.

  With his hand behind his back, he turned the doorknob and pushed the door open behind him onto the darkness of the unlit apartment.

  “You want to leave?” He asked, his dark eyes meeting mine.

  I tried not to fall apart all over the tiles of the bathroom floor. I swallowed, but couldn’t reply.

  “Can I come and talk in your room again?” He asked quietly.

  I looked from his big eyes to his full lips, which I had now tasted, to the bathrobe way oversized on him, hanging open down his sternum.

  “Okay,” I said. I gestured at the towel around my waist. “I just need to put on my PJs. You can go in there. I’ll be a minute.”

  He left and I closed the door.

  What just happened made me think that I must have imagined overhearing him masturbating and saying my name.

  How could he have walked in here so casually, so confidently, if that was what I had just heard fifteen minutes ago?

  Had I hallucinated? Had my sexual frustration become so extreme that it was inducing psychosis?

  I took my PJs off the back of the bathroom door and put them on slowly, soft thin flannel pants and a white singlet.

  It was almost exactly the same thing I had been wearing when Angel fucked me so good that one time, on top of the comforter, when he told me all about César.

  The clothes weren't the exact same items. I just re-bought the same thing each time they wore out.

  I left the bathroom and turned off the light behind me. I opened my bedroom door and tried to tell myself I was making it all up, that there was nothing going on and I was imagining everything.

  He was sitting on the end of the bed just like he had been last night. I went and got under the covers just like I had last night.

  “DT cancelled my show.”

  I didn’t meant to say it. Didn’t mean to give in to self-pity.

  “Cancelled it?” Anthony turned toward me and sat cross-legged on the bed.

  “He wants each person to just do their own act,” I said tonelessly.

  “What about me?” His voice was small.

  “He said we can do the new numbers together.”

  After a minute, he said, “What about the auditions?”

  “No way,” I said in the same dead, emotionless voice. “Forget it. It’s not happening.”

  He sat there, and silence descended. He stood up.

  “I’ll go,” he said in the quietest voice, barely above a whisper.

  That was when I caught a glimpse of his face and realized he must think I was being terse because I was upset with him. Maybe he thought I was mad because—because of what I had overheard him doing. Maybe he was trying to apologize, and he thought I was freezing him out.

  “No, wait—Anthony—”

  He looked bac
k when he heard me say his name.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to— Don’t go.”

  He didn’t come and closer, though. “You seem upset,” he observed.

  “I am,” I said.

  “Are you sure you want me to stay here?”

  My mouth went dry. Something about the way he said it. The fact that he said it at all.

  I nodded.

  Instead of sitting on the edge of the bed, he came all the way round to my side and he sat down next to me, not a foot away.

  “Is this okay?” He raised his eyes to mine.

  I swallowed. I could hardly stand to see him there in front of me, the gentle light from the nightstand reflected in his doe eyes.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So what are we going to do?” he asked.

  I hung my head. “I don’t know.”

  I heard a ticking sound like he had just swallowed around a dry throat and he said, “Do you want me to hug you?”

  I nodded, not looking up. I was cross-legged under the covers and he scooched up right next to me, and I couldn’t look at him but his arms crept around me, around my mid-section, and I tried to be as gentle as I could when I put my arms around his delicate shoulders.

  He gathered right into me and I felt his chest against mine, and I felt his heart beat against mine. He pulled away and looked at me, but didn’t smile.

  “Better?”

  I dropped my gaze and nodded. But it wasn’t better, it was worse. I wanted him. I wanted him so much.

  “I have an idea,” Anthony said.

  I looked up in surprise.

  He nodded and played with the tube edging on Angel’s bathrobe. “You upload the auditions, right?”

  I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to speak right now.

  “Do you have the log in?”

  I looked up at him, an idea forming in my mind of what he was suggesting. “DT doesn’t understand technology,” I said. “I’ve always done the uploads for him.”

  Anthony raised his eyebrows. “Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “Salazar is booked,” I muttered to myself. “We could have him set up at Persimmon.” I looked at him in amazement. “I can’t believe you…”

  “I told you I was a rebel,” he said without a trace of a smile. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but the only way DT would find out we had done this would be if one of us was offered to be in the pageant. Right?”

  I nodded. A strange rush of excitement was buzzing through me. “And then—he—”

  Anthony nodded. “He might be mad we went around his authority, but that won’t matter if one of us is a Contessa.”

  “You’re a genius,” I burst out, and my face went hot with the compliment, but I didn’t care.

  I didn’t care if he knew I thought he was something pretty special, after all.

  He smiled a small smile. “I thought of it. Not Damaris.”

  I smiled back, but both our smiles faded quickly as we stared at each other. I started to feel uncomfortable. I swallowed thickly and he seemed to be watching.

  I wanted him so much, and I kept thinking of the kiss in the club, my dreams, my fantasies, and right now I kept looking at where the bathrobe was gaping a little more on the left-hand side and wishing he would pull it down and expose his shoulder, his arm, his chest.

  I wanted to push him down on top of the comforter, his scent mingling with the fragrance of the dryer sheets from the bed linen.

  I must have looked too long, because he looked down at the robe where I had been looking and then he looked at me.

  Why had he kissed me in the club?

  That was what I wanted to know.

  That was the question that had been rattling around my brain for the last two hours.

  Anthony slipped the bathrobe off his shoulder, exposing the deep gold skin of his arm and one small nipple, and then looked at me and watched my reaction.

  My reaction was that I wanted to escape like a rat in a trap, and I wanted to rip the bathrobe off.

  He licked his lips and pulled down the other side, so the too-big robe fell off his torso completely and pooled at his waist and he lifted his arms out of it easily.

  I ran my eyes over him.

  “More?” His word was just a whisper.

  I nodded.

  He stood up. The robe was still tied around his waist. “Now you,” he said, backing away a little.

  “You—you want me to—” I gasped, losing my cool entirely. I was still clothed but I felt as exposed as a snail without a shell.

  He nodded.

  The question might as well have been, You want me, too? That was the question I was asking inside, unvoiced.

  I pushed the covers back and got out of the bed, my feet landing on the Persian rug my mom had bought me as a moving-in present.

  I still didn’t want to, I was still scared shitless, but I lifted the singlet over my head and tossed it on the rug.

  Anthony’s eyes took me in. He had seen me like this, he had seen me butt naked, a thousand times. But it hadn’t been for him. It hadn’t been—like this.

  That was what I had done wrong to him.

  Taken that, or tried to take it, when it could only be given.

  He held my gaze and took his hands away from the robe around his waist and it fell to the floor and landed in a pile.

  “Lord preserve me,” the words slipped from my lips without my conscious control.

  I had seen him, if not like this, at least almost like this, a thousand times. And I hadn’t truly seen his beauty until this moment. And now I knew it was because he was choosing to show it to me and because I wanted to see him.

  He looked at my pajama pants and raised his eyebrows.

  I felt self conscious, I did. And I never felt self conscious about being naked. It just wasn’t something I cared about. Until this moment.

  But I undid the drawstring just as Angel had done on the ancestor of these pants and they fell to my ankles. And then I was standing there butt naked with Anthony staring at me.

  “Sit down,” he pointed at the bed.

  Now there were butterflies in my stomach and I felt ridiculous. Why were we naked? This was crazy. Maybe I was about to wake up.

  Was this a practical joke?

  Was DT and the rest of them about to pop out from behind the furniture and jeer, shouting that the fraternization rule had been reinstated and I was being expelled?

  I couldn’t think of anything to do except what he told me to, so I sat down on the edge of the bed, folding the bedclothes back where I had gotten out of bed, smoothing them down.

  Then I felt the bed dip and his thigh brushed mine as he sat down next to me. He pulled me toward him and, taking my face in his hands, he covered my mouth with his lips.

  It was too much. The lights were on, he was naked and so much of his skin was suddenly touching so much of my skin.

  He pulled away and I could see in his face that he was losing confidence. He had come in here and done all of this and now he was freaking out, just like I was.

  I started to panic, my heart racing in my chest and I was freezing up. I wasn’t anywhere near hard and he didn’t seem to be either. He was thinking he had made a huge mistake and how was he going to get out of it?

  How did you climb down from taking all your clothes off stark naked in someone else’s bedroom?

  He got up and turned off the light on the nightstand.

  We were plunged into darkness and I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders and when his skin whispered against mine as he came back and sat down next to me, it didn’t make me panic.

  His lips brushed my ear. “I had a dream that I sucked you off.”

  I didn’t have to do anything, it did itself, we were kissing, just like that, I was holding his face and his hands were on my sides and every touch of his lips, his tongue, sent shivers across my skin.

  He pushed closed to me, his chest against mine and he stroked his
tongue against mine and ran it over my teeth and when he gasped for breath, I wrapped my arms around his small frame and pulled him into me and kissed him, his sensuous lips, so full and so smooth, his velvety tongue which made my stomach flip when I touched it.

  He gasped again and panted against my mouth, his hands on my shoulders. His hand trailed down my side to my hip and the top of my thigh.

  A sound escaped me when he did that, because my penis had been slowly filling while we kissed. Now I was hot and hard and my pulse was pounding in the veins in my member and I felt the fear again, even stronger than ever before, because there was no hiding now.

  It hadn’t felt like this many times. There hadn’t been many times when it felt like I was being opened up and my insides exposed. When I feared that a gentle touch might hurt because I had become as sensitive as a raw nerve.

  He didn’t go right ahead and touch me. He stroked his hand up and down my side, from my flank to my hip and down my thigh and back again, while I got my breath back, and then he kissed me while he did it, his tongue probing my mouth, and with his other hand he touched my chest and back, and down to my other thigh and I moaned.

  “Oh my god,” he gasped, bringing his hands up to my face again and kissing me harder. I ran my hands down his body now, hesitant until he moaned into my mouth and gasped, “St Sebastian,” and took my hands and put them on his head.

  I wasn’t sure why until I felt him slide off the bed and his hands and arms on my thighs.

  “Oh god,” I gasped as my erection twitched and then throbbed, hard, spasming with pleasure all by itself, just from the anticipation.

  I felt him insert himself between my knees and I parted them for him, felt him anchor one hand at the top of each of my thighs and his forehead against the top of my thigh.

  “Lie back,” he said into my skin, and then, “Do you want it?”

  “Yes,” I shuddered. My chest was heaving. And then his mouth sealed over the head of my erection. “Yes. Anthony. Oh, god, Anthony—”

  My eyes rolled up in my head and I held his head in my hands as a blinding wave of arousal rushed through me, peaking in the pleasure deep in my groin.

  His head moved down and the pressure around my dick increased, hot and smooth and I moaned again, I couldn't help it. He came back up and with my thumbs I felt his cheeks hollowing out and I couldn’t breathe with how good it felt.