Suddenly, instinctively, Austin threw both his arms around Nick's waist and pulled the other man's body closer to his. His lower body seemed to be coming apart at the seams, torn open from within. He was going to come!
"Nick, you always do this to me. You drive me crazy. I can't hold it back. You just turn me on too fucking much! Fucking your hot ass like this, it's too damn much. I just have to shoot! Oh fuck! Fuck, yes! Here it comes!"
He thrust his dick all the way up Nick's anus and then he literally bellowed with lust, like a bull in rut as his passion exploded inside that tight, gripping channel of heated, steamy flesh. It didn't seem possible that the reservoir tip of the condom encasing his dick could contain such a rush of semen that burst from his dick as though it were the spurting nozzle of a garden hose. Austin ejaculated helplessly deep within Nick's hungry manhole. As Austin climaxed, Nick thrashed about wildly in his fucker's strong arms like a hooked trout just yanked from the water into the shock of the cold air in which its gills were useless.
Nick's anal convulsions had increased in frequency and intensity, and now, suddenly, maddeningly, that thrilling sense of contraction and release gripped and held him as he, too, got ready to unload.
"I'm there…Austin…I'm there," he said between pants. "I'm coming, too! Oh, man!"
"I want your load, big man," Austin coaxed him. "Give it to me!"
Nick let him have it, all right. Grunting and laughing nervously, he came, with Austin helping him to achieve his own fierce satisfaction by grasping and milking Nick's cock as it began to shoot a jet of sticky white come through the air even while Austin's own orgasm subsided,.
"Yeah! Look at that hot come flying all over the place," Austin exulted, before coherent speech dissolved into a series of half-choked gurgles and gasps coming from both men.
Nick collapsed on top of Austin's own exhausted nude body, but Austin didn't stop fucking him. The young stud's still-hard cock continued to ream in and out his rectum, prolonging the quaking and shuddering sensations it had provoked deep inside him. Both mens' bodies were hot and slippery with the sweat of sex, and they could feel a gooey morass between them at the place where Nick's chest and stomach were pressed against Austin's, stuck together now by a layer of Nick's semen.
Slowly, the violence of the fuck gave way to a calmer awareness of fulfillment, of drowsy pleasure. Nick let his head sink onto his lover's sweaty chest as Austin's hands continued to caress his trembling body.
"That was a good one," Austin whispered. "Not that it isn't always good with you, but on a scale of one to ten, I'd give that fuck an eight and a half."
"Yeah, definitely one of our better ones, so far," Nick agreed. He thought for a moment. "What was that you said, before we got started? Something about me being the sexiest guy on the East Coast?"
"Something like that, yeah."
"I resent that," Nick protested. "I flatter myself that I'm bicoastally sexy."
Austin sighed. "Whatever. I'm too fucked out to debate the issue, right now."
They lay like that for several minutes until Nick slid off Austin's torso and snuggled down beside him on the bed. Nick gave Austin a kiss and then slipped out of his arms and from the bed. Austin made a feeble effort to sit up and detain him, but the other man easily eluded his grasp.
"Do we have to get up?" Austin complained.
"Yes," Nick said, firmly. "Go take your shower. I'll get breakfast started. You want your usual?"
"Yes, please." Austin sank back onto the bed in a voluptuous sweat of post-ejaculatory languor and indifference.
"Don't you dare go back to sleep," Nick warned from the doorway. He didn't bother to retrieve his bathrobe, but left the bedroom and headed toward the kitchen, totally nude.
"All right," Austin grumbled. He hauled his ass out of the warm bed and stumbled toward the bathroom.
He'd been spending so many nights at Nick's place and at Nick's invitation, that he now kept some changes of clothes and a supply of his own toiletries, there. Freshly showered, shaved, and dressed, Austin joined Nick in the kitchen, where Nick, still puttering about, bare-assed naked, served him his coffee, orange juice, scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.
"You really shouldn't cook in the nude," Austin suggested. "What if you get splattered with hot grease from that frying pan, or something?"
"I'm a trained professional," Nick boasted. "I can take calculated risks, not just in the kitchen, but in the bedroom, as well."
"Famous last words. You're a good cook," Austin conceded. "But you're a better fuck."
"Thanks," Nick said, with that wry smile of his that Austin always found irresistible.
"Nick…?"
"Um?"
"How long have we known each other?"
"I don't know. A couple of months, hasn't it been?"
"It's been two months and ten days."
"Count on you to know exactly how long. What? Are you expecting some sort of an anniversary celebration when we hit the three-month mark?"
"No. I wouldn't dare to expect anything of the sort…not from you, anyway. You're not very romantic, Nick."
"Sorry."
"Oh, don't apologize. I like you just the way you are. I'm not dumb enough to think I'm going to change you. So I won't bother to try."
"We get along," Nick said. The matter-of-factness of the statement was softened, somewhat, by the intimate way he smiled at Austin again. "We suit each other. And, even though I know I don't always show it, Austin, I'm really very fond of you."
And that, Austin knew, was the extent of any declaration of his feelings that Nick Grandiforte was willing to make, at least at this point in their relationship. Austin returned Nick's smile. It would have to be enough, he realized--for now.
Chapter One
Rainy Night Blues
What had Austin said to him? Oh, yes. "I'm not dumb enough to think I'm going to change you. So I won't bother to try."
Nick couldn't help thinking about that remark after Austin left the house, and Nick got dressed and ready for his first appointment of the day. For one thing, Austin certainly wasn't dumb. He was mature for his age, tough, self-sufficient, and extremely perceptive. For another thing, now that Nick was giving the matter some serious thought, he didn't believe he was the same person he'd been only a year or two ago.
I've changed…haven't I? Ever since I moved to this town. And it hasn't been that long, only a little over a year. And I'm pretty sure I've changed in the couple of months--
okay, make that two months and ten days, to be precise--since I first met Austin and hooked up with him.
It had been raining that night, he'd reminded Austin. In fact, it had rained on and off, for most of that weekend and the following weekend. Nick remembered every detail of those two weekends, quite vividly.
I hadn't expected to meet anybody that night. And certainly not anybody like Austin. It started out as just another open microphone night, down at the coffee shop. It was just another dreary, rainy Friday night, in a small town!
Nick sighed. Steering his car automatically with one hand, he rubbed his chin with the other, rather enjoying the roughness of his beard stubble against his palm. It still felt strange not to be shaving twice in one day. The second time as a matter of routine on a Friday night. On some weekends lately, in fact, he didn't bother to shave at all between Friday and Monday morning. Maybe, he thought, he ought to just throw out his razor, and grow a beard.
Nick wasn't vain. In a sense, his looks were his stock in trade. He had spent much of his life carefully maintaining his personal appearance in order to make himself attractive to other men, but without being obsessive about it. Now, while hardly letting himself go, Nick had a more relaxed attitude about dress and grooming when he wasn't actually in the public eye.
It hadn't always been like this, of course. Once, when he'd still been stuck in a succession of nine-to-five jobs to support himself in between his considerably more exciting freelance engagements, he'd invariably rush hom
e from work on a Friday evening, wolf down a hurried dinner, and then devote a couple of hours to the weekly single gay male ritual of Getting Ready to Go Out. Nick would be anxious to look his best. He'd spend most of the night in one crowded, noisy bar or another, drinking too much, becoming steadily less choosey as the night wore on. If he picked up some guy, they'd go home together and suck and fuck into the wee hours of the morning. If Nick didn't connect on Friday night, he'd repeat the whole process on Saturday night. Often, he'd go out cruising again on Saturday night, even if he had gotten lucky the night before.
That had been in the old days, when he still lived in California, and later, in New York City. But even before he'd made his most recent move from the Big Apple to this small town in upstate New York, Nick's attitude toward casual sex had begun to change.
Nick had finally done some belated soul-searching, and recognized the obsessive nature of his bar-hopping. Now that he was self-employed, and making a reasonable financial success of it, he actually had much more free time on his hands. Ironically, he also had much less of a social life. Now that he was working for himself and could set his own schedule, he almost felt guilty when he wasn't working.
He also, almost found himself getting more satisfaction from his hobby, which was part-time music-making, than from sex. He supposed he ought to be alarmed by this gradual, slight decrease in his once-raging sex drive. Oddly enough, he wasn't. He felt relaxed, almost as though he was biding his time. Waiting, patiently--but for what? He didn't know. He didn't really care. He'd made a surprising discovery, namely, that going without sex for a few days in a row here and there had never actually killed anybody, after all!
He hadn't lived in this sleepy little town on the west bank of the Hudson River, for very long. Life here was very different from life in San Francisco or Los Angeles, to say nothing of Manhattan. To some degree, Nick was still experiencing culture shock as he made the transition to the much more relaxed pace of this community. If a man didn't know how to entertain himself, he could quickly get bored and restless, here. But he'd moved here with the intention of getting away from it all, so he could hardly complain.
The town did have a few things that distinguished it. It was close enough to New York City, only a short train ride, that some of the residents did commute to their work in the metropolis, and these people brought with them a certain sophistication. The town and its environs were admittedly picturesque, attracting a modest tourist trade. Bed and breakfasts were a local cottage industry. And, just outside the town limits, two major interstate highways happened to converge. Warehouses, garages, diners, cheap motels, and truck stops had all sprung up nearby over the years to support the trucking industry. Truck drivers were a common sight, passing through town in their rigs. Some of them, in fact, made their homes there, either in the town or in the immediate area when they were not on the road. Truckers, in Nick's experience, even some of the married ones, could be unusually open-minded and free, sexually speaking.
Nick smiled as the thought crossed his mind that the town now had another claim to fame, although it was one about which the majority of its residents were blissfully unaware. A man who had achieved a certain level of celebrity, or rather notoriety, now lived here among them. Incognito.
Now, on some Friday and Saturday nights, when he wasn't working at home, he'd developed a new ritual. He would make himself a decent meal for a change, then shower, change into casual clothes, and, fashionably unshaven, drive downtown to a coffee shop that had open mic nights. The manager liked to have live music, whether amateur or professional, in the evenings, and Nick had quickly become a regular, taking his turn among the singers, the guitar players and saxophonists and other instrumentalists, who signed up to do an informal set or two.
Nick was a good enough trumpet player to make some money from it, if not to do it for a living. He supplemented his income from his business ventures by teaching a few pupils, playing at weddings and other gigs, and doing other such free-lance work as performing on the sound tracks for commercials. The open mic stints paid nothing, although the employees manning the counter usually wouldn't let the performers pay for their coffee, afterward, but they were harmless fun. They kept Nick out of trouble. And keeping out of trouble was also somewhat of a novelty for him.
He was looking forward to this night at the coffee shop because he'd missed last weekend. He'd been on a brief business trip, not only out of town, but out of the country. He'd gone to Germany, no less, and although he'd had a good time and the trip had been a success, it felt good to be back. That sort of hectic travel schedule now figured less and less as a part of Nick's routine, and he didn't really miss it. The excitement of seeing new places and meeting new people was counterbalanced by the quiet pleasure of being back in familiar, comfortable surroundings.
I'm getting too old to carry on the way I did in Berlin. After all, I'm not a kid anymore! Disgraceful, that's what my behavior over there was…absolutely disgraceful. I really ought to be ashamed of myself. Still, even as he lectured himself, Nick could feel a self-satisfied smirk creasing his lips. Yeah, I may not be a kid any more, but I've still got it, even after all these years!
The late winter night was damp, chilly, and overcast, so Nick was glad he had worn his leather jacket over his sweatshirt and jeans as he parked his car, grabbed his instrument case, and hurried into the coffee shop to beat the rain that was threatening to descend at any moment. He got a coffee, signed in on the performers' roster on a chalkboard, and sat down at a table, where he opened his trumpet case and pulled out his horn. It was a silver-plated Selmer trumpet in C, made in France in the 1950s. Nick owned other instruments, but this was his favorite. It had a marginally narrower bore than most trumpets, which seemed to result in a tone that was smaller and less brilliant and penetrating, but sweet and mellow--ideal for the kind of lyrical music that Nick especially liked to play, when he was playing essentially for his own pleasure. On these coffee shop gigs, when he was of course playing without accompaniment, he tended to stick to soft blues and light jazz standards, sometimes throwing in a show tune, or even an operatic melody, to vary the fare.
He tested the Selmer's pistons. One of them didn't move quite as freely as it should, so he unscrewed the piston from the valve casing and oiled it, using the little plastic bottle of valve oil he kept in the case for that purpose. He replaced the piston, then retrieved the trumpet's mouthpiece from its bag and set it in place.
He happened to glance up at that moment, and was mildly startled to see two young guys, both possibly just over twenty-one, if that, standing at the counter, getting their coffee. One was a dirty-blond, not bad-looking in his young, puppyish way, but rather nondescript. He had a habitually bored expression on his face.
It was his buddy who caught Nick's attention. He was short and compactly built, with a pale, flawless complexion, blue eyes, and very black hair. This man was now staring at Nick so openly, so curiously, that at first the older man thought the younger one had mistaken him for somebody he knew. Their eyes met and held across the distance, and Nick permitted himself the ghost of a smile. The dark-haired number didn't look away, and, with a mixture of cynicism, amusement, and delight, Nick realized that the youngster was attracted to him. Nick was being cruised, whether consciously or not, and by a guy who was young enough to be…well, young enough to be his kid brother, anyway!
My well-built, well-hung, and very hunky kid brother, Nick added mentally, as the guy turned toward his blond companion and said a few words to him in a low voice.
The blond one remained blissfully unaware of his friend's interest in Nick, who caught himself checking out the black-haired stud's body quite brazenly. He had already noticed, because it was so hard to miss, how tight his jeans were, how high and round his ass cheeks looked in them, and how long and thick a soft lump of young dick he had stuffed half-way down one leg of the pants. Damn!
Get your mind out of the gutter and back on business, Nick told himself sternly. He n
eeded to warm up, and now, of course, the large plate-glass windows of the coffee shop were wet and blurry from the rain. Ordinarily, Nick would simply step outside onto the sidewalk to do his warm-up, so as not to bother the patrons, or the other performers. Tonight, he matter-of-factly carried his trumpet with him as he went to the men's room, where he sequestered himself in one of the stalls and played softly, treating a couple of guys who came in to use the facilities, one after the other, to an impromptu concert of scales and intervals and scraps of melodies. Satisfied that his embouchure was ready for action, Nick went back out front and awaited his turn at the mic.
A few minutes later, he was lost in his own private world of sublimation as he was slowly, voluptuously shaping the melodies he was playing from memory, like a lover caressing his partner's naked and responsive body. He was playing well. He was in the groove, lips and fingers moving as though by sheer instinct. He experienced a familiar phenomenon. The trumpet, warmed by the contact of his lips on its mouthpiece and by the steady flow of his breath through its bore, now felt almost like a living thing, an extension of his own body.
The small audience was appreciative, and applauded vigorously enough that Nick felt justified to do an encore. He played Printemps qui commence from Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila. It was a nice sensuous tune, and an appropriate choice for a cold, rainy night, when thoughts of the imminent arrival of spring provided welcome reassurance.
As he played, he saw that the two young guys were still seated at their table on the far side of the room. This was interesting because the open mic nights tended to attract a somewhat older crowd. When customers these guys' age happened to come in during a performance, they rarely stayed long. Nick caught the eye of the bolder one who actually seemed to be listening quite intently to the music. The dark-haired number, who was so obviously the more extroverted of the two, actually blushed when he and Nick made eye contact again, but then, he flashed the older guy a radiant smile, as though Nick really was his long-long big brother!
Youre So Unromantic Page 2