by Lou Harper
“Talk to me, tell me how it feels.” Sam dribbled slow drops of red across Jay’s upper chest.
“Sort of like pinpricks, but not really. Softer.”
Sam let a few fat drops fall on Jay’s nipple. Jay hissed and squirmed.
“Does it hurt?”
“Yes. No! Both. It’s…it’s like being teased by a feather, but more intense.”
Sam drizzled a circle around Jay’s navel.
“It’s like tiny, hot fingers tapping on my skin.”
Sam stifled a laugh. The beauty of wax was that it was controlled and random at once. For Jay it was a lesson in anticipation and delayed satisfaction. He twitched and squirmed every time the hot droplets splashed on his skin, and waited in tense suspense in between. Sam’s pleasure came from watching Jay, toying with him, keeping him off-balance. Little drops of wax falling around Jay’s nipple elicited one kind of response, a small puddle that ran down his side another. The melted paraffin wax was the perfect tool to keep Jay on that thin edge where pleasure and pain were indistinguishable from each other. He picked up the beeswax candle and carefully dribbled a few drops on a bit of naked skin. Beeswax was hotter, and Jay’s surprised hiss attested to it. Sam returned to the paraffin candles. Every twitch of muscle, every gasp, shot straight to Sam’s groin. This was sweet torture for both of them.
By the time Jay’s chest and stomach were covered in a multicolored sheet of wax, Sam was ready to burst. He blew out the last of the candles and sat down next to Jay. His fingers brushed over hardened wax and little bits of exposed skin. Jay arched into the touch. The baby oil made peeling off the wax easy, but Sam took his time with it.
“Sam,” Jay moaned.
“Yeah?”
“I want to see you.”
Sam reached up and pulled off the blindfold. The naked need in Jay’s eyes cut through him like a knife. He kissed Jay with all the hunger and frustration of the things he secretly craved, but couldn’t have. There was only the now, he reminded himself. He broke off abruptly, shucked his jeans and coated his aching cock with baby oil. Jay spread his legs for him.
They fucked in a tight embrace, oil and crumbs of wax trapped between their bodies. Sam unbuckled the cuffs but held Jay’s wrists in place with his hands. He wanted Jay to know that he was Sam’s possession, even if just for now. He claimed Jay with body, mouth and cock. There were no words, but every deep thrust said “mine”. Jay took him beat for beat.
It was the first time they did it without a condom, having their test results come back clean. Sam kept reminding himself that it wasn’t the sign of any sort of commitment, just something to make their sex life even more enjoyable. Yet, it was easy to forget logic and reason, and imagine it being more.
“Oh fuck, harder!” Jay moaned.
Sam changed their position, pulling himself up, folding Jay in half. The new angle got Jay whimpering and moaning. His face was flushed and he was furiously jerking himself. Sam was close but wanted Jay to come first, so he held back with all his strength till Jay’s face crumpled and sphincter muscles clenched tight around Sam’s cock. Sam couldn’t have held on any longer then—he shot his jizz deep into Jay’s ass. Jay’s answering moan coiled around his chest so he could hardly breathe.
The downside of wax was that it was messy. Sam bundled up the bedsheet and threw it into the trash. Screw trying to clean it. He put things away while Jay showered, then took his own turn. He found Jay lounging on the sofa, dressed but barefoot. Jay had sexy, boyish feet. Sam plumped down on the other end of the sofa and pulled one of Jay’s feet to his lips and kissed it. Jay wiggled his toes.
“This candle thing, you’ve done it before,” Jay stated rather than asked.
“Yup.”
“A lot?”
Sam dropped Jay’s foot into his lap, but didn’t let it go. “That’s relative. Your first time, I’m guessing.”
“Duh.” Jay rolled his eyes.
“Did you like it?”
“What do you think?”
Sam leered back with intent. “I can think of a few other things we could do for the first time.”
He knew what he was doing—dangling a carrot in front of a horny kid to keep him around a little longer. Jay blushed a little, and Sam marveled at it.
Jay scrambled to cover it up. “Have I ever told you about my first ‘first time’?”
“No. Why don’t you?”
Jay liked to talk, and Sam liked to listen.
“I think I always knew I was into guys. But I figured out pretty early on not to talk about it, especially not at home. There was something I said about the Olympic swimmers when I was six or seven, and Chrissy totally made fun of me.”
“Chrissy?”
“My mother. When we were out she liked to pretend that she was my sister. She was only sixteen years older than me so we could pull it off. In the end it stuck.”
“Sixteen?”
“Yeah, she got herself knocked up so she could get married and move out of her parent’s house. Not that they were bad people or anything, but they had all these expectations of her, like going to college and stuff, and she didn’t care for them. The irony is that growing up I spent more time with my great-grandmother than with Chrissy. Nana was nice, but totally old school, biblical about the gays and all that.”
“What about your father?”
Jay dismissed the man with the flick of his wrist. “They divorced a few years later. Chrissy already had another guy lined up. She was good at that. I had half a dozen stepdads by the time I blew town. My father got himself a new family. I didn’t see much of him after that.”
Well, that explained plenty, not that it mattered. Sam didn’t prod.
“I see. So who popped your cherry?” Sam asked instead.
“That would’ve been Mr. Thompson in tenth grade. He was a substitute math teacher filling in for Mrs. Wilson when she went on maternity leave.”
“How old was this Mr. Thompson?”
“Very old, at least twenty-six.” Jay made an exaggerated expression of shock.
Sam snorted and kept kneading Jay’s foot.
Jay went on. “I badly had the hots for him. I kept getting into trouble so I’d be sent to detention when it was his turn. Then I kept making eyes at him, and making a general nuisance of myself. You wouldn’t believe my excitement when he finally hauled me into the broom closet and let me suck him off.”
“That was nice of him.”
Sam’s mocking was only fuel to the fire. Jay looked at Sam with big, almost innocent eyes that made it easy for Sam to imagine him as a schoolboy. His impish smile gave him away, though.
“Mr. Thompson was an excellent teacher. The first semester he taught me about all the wondrous things you can do with your tongue, and also how to suppress my gag reflex. In second semester I learned about sphincter muscles, lubrication and the importance of condoms—although that lesson didn’t sink in till later. I’ll never forget the first time we went all the way. He was so tender and careful—the whole time he was kissing me and whispering sweet things in my ear.”
Jay’s eyes went soft, and Sam caught himself holding his breath. He waited for Jay to continue.
“It was getting dark outside, but the lights around the football field were on because the marching band was practicing. Halftime shows still get me horny.”
Sam chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind. Not that getting you horny is all that difficult.”
Jay beamed and put his other foot in Sam’s lap.
“So how long did this go on?” Sam asked, picking up that foot.
Jay’s brows knotted. “Not long enough. Actually, that first time was also the last one. The next week he was just gone, and Mrs. Wilson was back. He didn’t even warn me. I don’t know why—he had to know.”
Jay wrinkled his nose at the recollection, as if it was an unpleasant smell. Sam lifted Jay’s foot and pressed the soft pads of Jay’s toes to his lips. Jay laughed and wiggled his toes.
“So
tell me about yours,” Jay prompted Sam.
“My first time?”
“Surely it’s something safe to talk about, Mr. Bond.”
“Okay. I was fourteen.”
“Go on.”
“I used to be a bully in school.”
“Hard to believe.”
“Shush, you.”
“Not a word.” Jay pressed his lips together in a big show.
“Little Jimmy Molnar got the worst of it. He was different. His parents were immigrants—that was the only reason they lived in our crummy neighborhood. They were both college-educated people. He was an architect, and she was, I think a teacher, but their diplomas weren’t recognized here. He had to go back to school, pass exams. They both spoke with heavy accents, but Jimmy had only the slightest hint of it, mostly when he was flustered, but I mocked him mercilessly about it anyway. He was smart, bookish, got good grades. Worst of all, just looking at him filled me with a yearning that scared the hell out of me. So naturally, I acted like an asshole.”
“So what happened?”
“That summer I was working at a crap little pizza joint. Of course, it wasn’t really…but that doesn’t matter. Jimmy came in with his mom one day. She was very nice to me, but I was furious. I kept thinking how much he must have enjoyed that I had to serve him, how humiliating it was. After work, instead of going home, I lurked around their house. I got lucky. I couldn’t have known, but he had gone to the library and came home alone.”
Jay wrinkled his forehead, but didn’t say a word, so Sam went on.
“I cornered him. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I wanted to teach him a lesson. And then there he was all frightened. He looked like a little rabbit, soft and defenseless. Huge eyes. It made me feel like shit.”
“What did you do?”
“I kissed him. Immediately I was mortified. I don’t know what I would’ve done if he pushed me away or laughed, but he kissed me back. Next he invited me in. That summer we spent every evening together.”
Sam sank back into the sofa and closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought of little Jimmy for such a long time, yet if he concentrated he could taste him on his tongue. Insistent toes poking into his stomach broke him out of his reverie.
“You can’t stop there. You haven’t gotten to the juicy parts yet,” Jay complained.
“His parents were busy and left us alone for hours ‘playing’. We learned how to get each other off, first with hands, then with our mouths. He was my first blowjob and my first sixty-nine—at the same time.”
“How long?”
“At the end of the summer they moved away.”
“Have you ever seen him again?”
“No. I wish I could thank him though.”
“For being your first?”
“That, and for curing me from bullying. I graduated to tough guy, picking fights with guys bigger than me.”
Jay rubbed his free foot against Sam’s groin. “You were the bane of junior high, weren’t you? The kid who was constantly sent to the principal’s office?”
Sam had a notion Jay had a thing for bad boys. Who didn’t?
“You bet,” he said, and captured one of Jay’s wriggly toes with his lips.
Chapter Six
SR: I got something.
NT: About fucking time. What is it?
SR: I know where your friend’s hiding. I’d rather not say it on the phone.
NT: Yeah. Be at Mario’s in half an hour.
“This is the singularly most boring thing I’ve ever done, including watching my pet turtle trying to mate with a rock,” Jay complained.
“Stop whining and pay attention to your rod instead,” Sam chided him.
“I’d rather you paid attention to my rod,” Jay shot back without thinking.
Sam flashed a warning look at him. Jay glanced in the direction of Bill, but the guy appeared fully occupied with impaling an uncooperative worm on a hook. It was official—Jay hated fishing. To make things worse, the only person with whom Sam appeared to be on speaking terms outside of the diner was the fatally serious and taciturn Bill Harlan.
Jay had gotten over his initial unease around Bill soon after their regular lessons had started. However, he’d completely failed to draw the man into anything resembling a personal conversation. Bill had been like Teflon to Jay’s machinations. So when Sam had declared that the three of them would go fishing, Jay’d known there would be nothing good to come out of it. He’d been right.
“I’ll go swimming,” he sullenly declared.
“Fine, just go far enough not to disturb the fish,” Sam said.
Jay leapt up and stomped a couple hundred feet downriver. He had no swimsuit so he just stripped naked and jumped into the water. It wasn’t much of river, only reaching to his chest at the deepest parts. In other areas, farther down where the riverbed widened out, the water was barely knee-deep. He entertained himself for a while splashing around, but eventually got bored again. This whole nature thing wasn’t his gig. He climbed back to solid ground all dripping and naked, but only the crickets paid him any mind. Sam and Bill sat in their folding chairs and stared at their idle bobbers. Jay pulled his shorts up over his wet skin, not bothering with his shirt.
“Caught anything?” he asked, plopping down on the grass.
“It’s not all about catching anything,” Bill explained in an atypical fit of verbosity. Almost philosophical too.
“So you didn’t?” Jay snarked.
“Nope.” Bill popped the tab off a can of beer.
There was a cooler sitting between Sam and Bill, containing a couple of sandwiches and a six pack. Bill was on his second or third, Sam probably still on his first. The can in his hand was more like a prop—he lifted it to his mouth time to time and took a gulp, but Sam wasn’t much of a drinker. Jay clambered over to the cooler and took out a beer for himself. He sat back down and took a deep chug and grimaced—he didn’t really like beer. He picked up his fishing pole and reeled the line in. The hook was glinting empty at the end of the line.
“Here.” Sam held out the bag of nightcrawlers they’d bought at the bait shop earlier. Jay gingerly picked out a squirming fat worm. He poked at it with the pointy end of the fishing hook for a couple of seconds, but just couldn’t do it. When he thought nobody was looking he tossed the worm off into the grass.
“Run! Be free!” he whispered after it. Then he shrewdly cast his naked hook into the water.
He thought he caught Sam smirking but wasn’t sure. He didn’t care. If Sam and Bill wanted to spend a perfectly good day drowning worms, that was their business, he didn’t have to participate.
Jay sat down in his own chair, put his shirt on, took it off, stretched out, sat back up, scratched himself. He tried to get comfortable and relax, but just couldn’t stay put. Finally, Sam reached out and laid a large hand on the scruff of Jay’s neck. It was just a touch, nothing more, but it drew all of Jay’s focus to that single point. When Sam’s thumb made minute rubbing motions on Jay’s skin, the scraping sensation nearly made Jay purr. Once Sam drew his hand back, Jay pushed his chair closer to Sam’s so their arms would touch. After that he could stay still.
Trouble started on a Tuesday—although it wasn’t till later that the significance of that day became clear to Jay. It started like any other day. At the tail end of the breakfast rush while Sam was out back dealing with a late delivery, Jay was making a fresh pot of coffee. Most of their customers were locals and truckers, but all sorts of other motorists stopped in too, seeing as the diner was right on the highway between nothing and more nothing. There was a good reason for the dingy neon sign out front to declare “Last Stop”. Even if Sam never turned it on, claiming that it’d been left by the last owner and was pointless anyway, since they weren’t open for dinner.
The man who walked in that Tuesday morning stood out in the sea of flannel and worn faces with his dark hair, sharp features and expensive clothes. A gold Rolex glinted from under the cuff of his shirt.
Jay had a sharp eye for stuff like that. What really caught his attention though were the man’s eyes—cold and unblinking. Their gaze made Jay itch under his skin, and the small hairs on his arms stood on end. It was a good thing the guy only ordered two cups of coffee to go. Jay was happy to see him go. Not a moment later Sam barreled out from the back.
“Is everything all right?” Sam asked.
“Fine and dandy,” Jay answered, because it would’ve been hard to explain that he got the heebie-jeebies from some guy who didn’t do anything more sinister than buy coffee.
Jay forgot about it all soon enough, but then the shit hit the fan. One moment he and Sam were having a normal, practically domestic evening, Sam chopping vegetables while watching the evening news in the kitchen, Jay doing laundry. The next moment Jay heard a loud clatter from the kitchen, and Sam was on the front lawn, cell phone in hand. Sam didn’t look happy. Before Jay could ask what was going on, Sam jumped into the truck and drove off. When he came back, it wasn’t him. It couldn’t possibly be. The man who looked like Sam went straight to Jay’s room, shoved all of Jay’s belongings into a sports bag, and took a flabbergasted Jay by the elbow, steering him out the door.
“Sorry, kid, it’s been good times, but you have to go now. The bus arrives in ten minutes.”
Jay couldn’t believe his own ears. Not this fucking shit again! He jerked his arm out of Sam’s hold and let all the bile that suddenly filled him up spill out.
“What is it, are the wife and kids coming for a visit?” he snarled.
“Yep, that’s exactly it,” Sam replied in a flat tone. He wouldn’t meet Jay’s eyes.