The door to the restrooms slams, the guy is gone.
“Oh God,” he manages after a few beats of silence. “I think I underestimated you.”
It’s my turn to plaster on a wicked grin: “I think you might have.”
I’m still pressed against the door, still with my trousers open, still hard as a rock. Somehow, none of that seems to matter.
Still, he lowers me to the floor, then says:“You got off on that.”
Suddenly bashful again, I find myself unable to meet his eyes when I mumble: “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“It felt right,” is what I come up with.
“Yeah?” He’s giving me this totally open look, like he’s in awe both of my actions and my openness about them. He doesn’t press for information, but I give it anyway.
“Suddenly I knew how I could please you,” I explain. “I wanted to please you more than I wanted to please myself. And it was like I just knew you’d love this.”
He laughs now, more fully than I’ve ever seen him laugh before. “You’re right,” he says. “I did love it. God, it was so hot. You’re so hot.” He’s silent for a moment, then gives me a piercing gaze: “But what do you love?”
I shrug. “I guess I just love giving you the things you love.”
That answer pleases him so much that it earns me a blowjob, right there in the cubicle. Needless to say, I don’t last long.
Chapter Five
Before I even get back to the hotel, Quentin has texted me all twenty-three pictures he took at the Bird House. They’re one exotic fowl after another.
“I was there with you,” I text him. “I saw all of those birds already, and the pictures too!” It’s not really a complaint.
All through my dinner with Pixxie, I’m distracted. I can’t help checking my phone more frequently than is polite, but if she notices she doesn’t comment. Not verbally, at least. She keeps shooting me conspiratorial looks over the main course, but I studiously ignore them. I can’t eat much, though, and that doesn’t escape her notice, either. The woman is watching me like a hawk.
When I’m on the train later that evening, stomach half-full of soup and half-full of butterflies, I text Quentin: “Wanna come stay at my place next weekend?” I don’t get a response until the next morning. “I’d love to!” he writes. “I’ll take the first train Saturday morning, have to work Friday night.” I feel both elated and apprehensive. He’s working Friday night. I try not to let it get to me.
When Quentin arrives on Saturday it’s almost lunchtime, and I’ve cleaned the entire apartment three times, rearranged the furniture then returned it to its original setting, and fluffed so many decorative pillows that my arms are a little sore. In spite of all of this preparation I am startled when the doorbell rings.
Quentin is there, making his way up the stairs with lithe steps, casually clothed in a t-shirt and jeans. I let him in and take his jacket from him. It’s dark leather and it takes me an embarrassing amount of effort not to bring it to my face to inhale the scent. A possessive hand on my shoulder brings me back to the present moment. I look up at Quentin. He kisses me. It’s just as good as it was at the zoo, but better. This time there’s no security guard giving us the stink-eye. I just let him kiss me, and let him hold me, and let him lift me up against the wall so that we’re not even an inch apart. I worry that perhaps I should be doing something, should be actively participating instead of limply writhing with pleasure in his arms, but he’s just too gorgeous. It paralyzes me.
“You’re beautiful,” he breathes against my ear. “You’re gorgeous. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.” He grabs my ass with both hands, pulls me a little closer so we’re cock to cock, separated only by our trousers.
“Like that?” he asks me. “You like that?”
I just moan, try to push myself more closely against him, but his grip is strong. I can’t even fucking move. It’s amazing.
“Hmm,” I manage. Then, as he lifts me a few inches higher and the friction goes from wonderful to goddamn perfect, I manage: “Yes, yes, yes.”
His mouth is on my neck, my jaw, along the shell of my ear. “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?”
The words don’t register. They all sound logical individually, but they don’t add up to any meaning. I clench my fists in his t-shirt, pulling his mouth back to my neck.
“Wh-what?” His hips feel so good against mine, it’s so good to wrap my legs around his slender waist.
“I’m going to make you beg, first.”
He lowers me back to the ground and takes a step back. I have to lean my full weight against the wall to remain standing up. This guy is going to be the death of me.
“Make me beg?” I understand very well what he means, I just want to hear more of his sinful voice.
He nods, as though he knows I want him to talk and is denying me that pleasure. He’s a devil.
I swallow a little bit of my pride: “How would you make me beg?”
This question earns me a chuckle: “Any way I wanted to.”
“Oh yeah?” It’s a challenge. I meet his eyes with a courage I don’t exactly feel.
“Yes. You remember, don’t you? How you felt at the zoo?”
This time I can’t meet his eyes, precisely because I do remember. I felt sexy and beautiful and appreciated and free. I felt understood. I can’t quite say any of that, but I’m sure he knows it anyway.
He reads my body language, too. “I remember too, Josh. I remember how you made me feel.”
Good. I made him feel good.
“I want to make you feel the way you make me feel. I want you to forget your own name in the haze of pleasure I give you. But do you know how one gets to that kind of pleasure?”
I know where he’s going with this, but I don’t interrupt.
“You have to want it, first. You have to want it so bad that you beg for it in words and gestures and with everything that you have. So I’m going to make you beg like that, because I want you to feel as good as I did at the zoo.”
My knees have gone a little weak. He’s still gazing at me intensely, gauging my reaction to his words. I try to maintain a pokerface, but I don’t think it’s very convincing.
“Not right now, though,” he adds. “Right now I just want you to tell me everything there is to know about you. Everything.”
That sounds like something I can do. We end up talking for most of the night.
Chapter Six
After that first wonderful yet frustrating weekend in Milwaukee, I decide I’d rather spend time at his place in Chicago. We can have an extra night together if I get there by the end of his shift Friday night. We meet at a bar and I try not to think too much of where he’s just been, what he’s been doing and who has been looking at him. I don’t quite manage it.
“It’s bothering you, isn’t it? My job?”
There’s no use trying to deny it. If Quentin is asking, he already knows. I can only nod.
“You think I should quit?”
There’s something in his tone that keeps me from answering. If I say yes, am I laying a claim on him that I have no right to? If I say no, will it look like I don’t really care? Regardless of appearances, what is my actual answer to his question?
“I don’t know.” I say.
He raises his eyebrows. “You do. You want me to quit.”
It’s too true to bother denying.
“You think I should find that flattering, too, don’t you?”
Maybe. I stay quiet.
“Well, I don’t. I can take care of myself, and I’m proud of that. Have you ever considered I enjoy stripping?”
“But I want to take care of you.” The moment the words are out of my mouth I know they were the wrong thing to say.
“Oh,” says Quentin, his tone now venomous. “Savior complex, much? We’ve been seeing each other for what, two weeks?”
He’s right. I know he’s right.
The only thing I can think
to say in my defense is: “You brought it up yourself.” That’s also the wrong thing to say.
“Yes,” he seethes. “In order to inform you that I’m not quitting. Not for you, not for anyone. If you can’t deal with that, you can go.”
He’s wearing a bracelet of his own design. It starts out wide and tapers off into an elegant curved point. The metal has been engraved to look like the feathers of a wing, and it’s a shiny emerald color.
“Is that the wing of the emerald sterling?”
He doesn’t respond, but I’m sure I recognize it. It’s one of the birds we saw at the zoo two weeks ago. Of course, I end up staying.
Chapter Seven
This whole being-in-love business is a genuine nightmare. I’m frazzled, hot and cold at unpredictable intervals, either not hungry at all or completely ravenous. Saying goodbye to Quentin on Sunday afternoon was hell, but I had to work Monday. He did, too. That’s what made it hell if I’m being honest.
On Wednesday afternoon, my boss sends me home early because I’m distracting my colleagues. I’ve been whistling, it seems. I hadn’t noticed. Everyone is giving me weird looks, but I’m just checking my phone every two minutes. I try to explain that I’m expecting an important conference call from Pixxie and her advisors, but everyone knows it’s a lie. In the end I just go.
I don’t even notice I’m on my way to Chicago until I’m already halfway there. What a mess. I’m so gone for this guy it’s ridiculous. I have to tell him as much. It’s terrifying, but not half as terrifying as my current state of distraction.
I run into Quentin at the front door of his apartment complex. I can tell by his bag, the canvas one that says “Gay As A Fucking Rainbow” that he’s on his way to work. And he’s more than a little surprised to see me.
“Hey,” I’m a little out of breath. On impulse, I kiss him. He responds, but not as enthusiastically as I’d like. Maybe this was a bad decision.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Okay,” he gestures towards the door, inviting me in, but I can’t wait.
“Let me just get this out first. I’m in love with you.”
I have the unparalleled pleasure of seeing his mouth fall open in surprise. I hold up my hand so he won’t interrupt.
“I’m in love with you. That means I want to make you happy. If you’re job at Tease makes you happy, you should keep it. And you can have me, too.”
That’s when I get the kiss I’d been hoping for, the one that has me curl my toes in my shoes like I’m a teenager again. I remember his words about making me want it before he gave me everything, and they light me up like a flame.
A few moments later, we separate, both out of breath.
“Don’t say it back yet,” I add quickly. I immediately wonder whether “yet” was a presumptuous word to use, but I’m putting it all on the line now, anyway. “Don’t say it until you can no longer help but say it.”
He grins so widely I think maybe he’s going to say it right away. Instead what comes out of his mouth is: “Come to work with me tonight.”
Well, I hadn’t been expecting that. His flushed cheeks are distracting, so I extricate myself from his arms and take a step back.
“I don’t know about that,” I say honestly.
The way he says “please” almost has me agreeing right away, but some semblance of sanity prompts me to ask: “Why?”
“Because I want your eyes on me. I want you to look at me, and look at all those other men looking at me, and I want you to know that you’re going to be coming home with me tonight, that you’re the one I will be fucking.”
Jesus. That’s quite a convincing argument. “Will you?”
“I’ll fuck you until you can’t walk.” He’s smiling a little, but something in his voice sounds dead serious. I follow him to Tease.
Chapter Eight
When we get there it’s still early and the joint is almost deadly quiet. None of the usual flashing lights or blaring music are on yet. I follow Quentin to his dressing room. It’s large, larger than I expected, and tastefully decorated for a dressing room in the adult entertainment industry. The furniture reminds me of the things at Quentin’s place. They exude the same understated, elegant style of his jewelry designs.
“What should I wear?”
It takes me a moment to realize that this question was directed at me, and that he is now impatiently gesturing towards a closet. Inside are countless risqué outfits, but the one that immediately catches my eye is a square of checkered fabric: a kilt. He sees my gaze focus on it and gives me a knowing smile. Within moments he’s donning the kilt, together with a pair of white knee socks that beautifully accentuate his muscled calves. His hair looks immaculate, as always. My mouth goes dry.
“D’you know why I took this job, Josh?”
I hesitate. “B-because you needed money after Quentin’s Boutique went bankrupt?” He’s told me as much, so the question doesn’t really make sense to me.
He chuckles darkly. “That wasn’t really it. Do you want to know?”
I nod, even though I’m not sure I do.
“I get off on it. I get off on men looking at me the way you’re looking at me now. It gets me hot. When I get home after work I touch myself, and I think about their gaping mouths and their big, awed eyes and I shoot like a fucking rocket.”
My gaze wanders down and I see his erection tenting the kilt. Holy hell.
“It makes me feel so good, baby, to have people looking at me that way. But I don’t think I’ll need it anymore. You know why?”
I swallow: “Why?”
“Because now I’ve got your attention, and it feels better than anyone else’s.”
He kisses me again, hard and possessive and perfect, then stalks out of the dressing room towards the stage. I hurry to get a front-row seat. For some reason I’m not even bothered by the rest of the audience. I just look at Quentin.
In a fit of luxurious romanticism, I call a cab to take us to his place. It’s not all that romantic, when you get down to it; it’s just blazing hot. The driver calls us out, mutters something undoubtedly homophobic under his breath, but I don’t even care because Quentin and I are making out like there’s nothing else in the world we could be doing. It might be my favorite part of sex; making out. When you do it with someone you really want to do it with and who really wants to do it with you, yet you decide to draw out the pleasure, to make it last, to make each other a little desperate first. He’s already pretty much reduced me to begging, but I manage to contain myself because we’re in a cab, goddamnit. In spite of everything I can see the public setting of it, the disapproving gaze of the taxi driver in the rearview mirror, the Chicago streets passing by, all of them are adding to Quentin’s excitement. He truly is a bit of an exhibitionist. I find I don’t mind in the slightest.
We’re in the elevator, almost at Quentin’s apartment, and in order to make the wait seem endless he starts talking to me in that dreamy voice again. He must have figured out what that does to me by now.
“Tell me something, Josh.”
I can’t answer. Then again, he really hasn’t asked me a question yet.
He goes on: “Do you get off on it? I hold so much power over you. I turn you on so fucking much, it’s unbelievable. I bet you would do anything to get to my dick.”
He lets the silence linger for a moment, then adds: “Answer me.”
“Yes,” I choke out.
“Call me sir.” It’s an offhand comment, as though it doesn’t cloud my thought with lust. “What did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.” His praise makes me shiver.
The elevator dings. At last, we are at his apartment.
“Have you thought about it?”
There’s no point to playing dumb. I just nod, then add: “Yes, sir.” Using that word completely undoes what little composure I have left.
“How have you pictured it, then? Me fucking you? Tell me.”
My brain sh
ort-circuits for a moment. I can’t manage a response.
“Answer me, Josh.”
“I want you to fuck me on your bed,” at his raised eyebrow, I hastily add: “sir.” The eyebrow doesn’t lower, so I go on: “I want you to fuck me while I’m on my hands and knees, so that you’re so deep inside me I can feel it everywhere. I want to…” I swallow. “I want you to fuck me with my legs spread like I’m…” I can’t say that quite yet. It’s almost too honest.
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