Freckles

by Amy Lane

  Carter nodded, his small moment of rebellion quashed. Yeah. He’d keep his painful job and eventually Sandy would get tired of the bitterness and leave him, because you couldn’t stay with someone who didn’t respect himself enough to change, could you?

  The conversation shifted to politics, and Carter let himself despair, and he thought he’d stay that way, sad and bitter and the guy who would eventually drive Sandy away—right up until pumpkin pie and ice cream.

  Because his mom—who usually cooked the plainest, most pedestrian pumpkin pie in the world, the kind that showed up in all of the commercials and that maybe fifty percent of the population ate as some sort of penance to the season—had changed her recipe. What lay waiting for Carter in the tiny refrigerator was actually a pumpkin pudding parfait—and it was light and pumpkin-saturated and delicious.

  “This is different,” Carter said, his eyes practically rolling back in his head with yum!

  “Yes.” His mother gave as close to a winsome smile as Carter had ever seen. “Even an old girl like me knows some tricks, Carter.”

  And like that, he had hope again. Because his mother—his mother—had escaped the conventional straight lines of the life she had planned since long before he’d been born. He wasn’t genetically locked into his job and his life and the eternally long road to retirement and death under the hard-soled heel of Marc Jacobsen.

  He let Freckles lick some of the whipped cream off his fingers and then scratched her head. But if he’d learned anything, he’d learned that he couldn’t depend on other people to be his magic carpet out of the parts of his life he didn’t like.

  That didn’t mean he couldn’t ask them along for the ride, though, did it?

  Still, by the time he’d kissed his mom on the cheeks and driven his car down the hill to Fair Oaks again, the melancholy of the empty road and the gray twilight had seeped into his bones. Sandy’s vibrancy called to him from across town, but Carter didn’t want to interrupt him if he was in a happy-family sort of place.

  He managed to wait until he and Freckles were home, and she was all walked out, to text.

  And he felt this terrible disappointment in himself as he did.

  So far, he and Sandy weren’t a thing yet—but they were a . . . a promise of a thing, and maybe the most glorious promise of a thing he’d ever had. The things he saw in Sandy—the enthusiasm, the playfulness, the joy, the willingness to take the parts of his life he liked the most and improve on them, the willingness to change—these things made him happy.

  Joyously, foolishly, incandescently happy.

  But he’d just spent an afternoon listening to his mother telling him that adulthood was trading in the parts of yourself that made you happy for the parts of yourself that could sustain a living.

  Now he was just . . . confused.

  And yearning for Sandy in every pore of his body, because he was pretty sure if anyone could listen—without judgments and with kindness—to why Carter was confused, it was Sandy.

  Carter had put on sweats as soon as he got home, and curled up on his couch, holding Freckles in his arm and staring blindly at a movie that he’d used to love as a kid.

  “It’s not wrong to be happy, is it Freckles?” he asked his puppy, but she’d had a rockin’ day for a young dog, what with the trip to Auburn and the turkey and the extra-long walk. She was now sprawled on her back in the crook of Carter’s elbow, her tongue extended, eyes closed, and tiny puppy snores coming from her open mouth.

  The dog was not the answer tonight, was she?

  Carter sighed and lost himself in that thing with the nanny, so sucked in that he was almost asleep when the knock sounded at the door.

  Freckles yelped and struggled to her feet while Carter untangled himself from the couch and the cushion and the afghan and stumbled to the door.

  Sandy practically crashed through as he unlocked it, and remembering to close the door behind him so the dog didn’t get out was pretty much the last cogent thing Carter did for quite a while.

  His face lit up.

  That was really all Sandy needed to see—the way Carter’s eyes widened and the way he smiled, almost childlike in his excitement.

  Sandy was wanted.

  He let Carter shut the door, because dog, and he even managed to get a pat on the head in as Freckles leaped up to nip at his fingers, but other than that, all of his concentration was on kissing Carter through the wall.

  Oh, yes—he tasted good.

  Safety, kindness, strength—and pumpkin pie! Sandy devoured him. Freckles trotted off, and Sandy had both hands free, one to cup Carter’s face and the other to rummage under his loose T-shirt.

  Ah . . .

  Smooth skin over a lean frame, the faint ridge of muscles clear under Sandy’s fingers. Mmm . . . A chest that didn’t fold concave, but wasn’t swollen and gym-modified, either. Sandy squeezed his pec, and Carter gasped into his mouth.

  “Wow!”

  “You weren’t trying to break up with me, right?” Sandy leaned backward to search Carter’s eyes. His glasses were steamed up, so Sandy paused for a moment to take them off gently, fold them, and then reach into the kitchen to set them on the counter by the phone charger. Sandy turned back to see Carter squinting at him, that look of dear befuddlement on his face that usually meant he was not in the same place Sandy was, but would find him eventually.

  “No. Just, you know, planning major life changes and feeling sad,” Carter said, honest and raw, which shouldn’t have surprised Sandy at all, but did, sometimes, too. “Oooh . . .” Because Sandy had resumed palming his chest, and had pinched a stubby little nipple. “You came all the way over because . . . Oooh . . .”

  Sandy chased him back against the wall to finish the kiss. And tasted, and again, and took all of the kisses Carter had to offer, praying for more.

  “Because,” he said finally, pulling away just enough to bury his nose in the soft skin at Carter’s neck. “Because you sounded strange, and I missed you, and I wanted to see you again.”

  “Nungh . . .” Carter’s hands got aggressive, burrowing under his sweatshirt and pulling his T-shirt from his jeans. Sandy shivered as the chill of his fingers skated across his stomach, and then Carter fumbled with his belt and he stopped taking breaths entirely.

  “Carter?”

  “I needed to see you again,” Carter said plaintively. “Needed. You make me want crazy things. Not just sex or a man in my life, but a better life. But I can’t build a better life if I don’t know your taste.”

  Sandy stared, mesmerized, as Carter took charge of his jeans, undoing the belt and shoving the jeans and boxers down Sandy’s thighs and then, oh God, sinking to a squat in the hallway and staring hungrily at Sandy’s cock.

  It was Sandy’s turn to lose his words. “Nungh . . .”

  “I’m so glad to see you.” Carter squinted up at him, and Sandy understood that he was talking to Sandy and not his semierect prick. Sandy got it, but Carter’s little breath puffs against his cockhead were dancing along Sandy’s nerve endings. He shoved his fist in his mouth to stifle a yelp, because it aroused him to the point of tickling and he was trying not to . . .

  “Oh my God, Carter!”

  Carter had sucked the head of the beast into his mouth—and then gave it a nice, all-over swirl with his tongue. He did it again, pausing to tantalize the pee-slit, titillate the edge of the bell, and downright torture the tightened cord of flesh at the frenulum.

  Sandy’s entire groin throbbed—balls, taint, hole, pretty much all points south of his navel and north of his knees swelling heavily and tingling.

  “Oh my God,” he breathed again. “Carter!” Because this was not just a blowjob—this wasn’t even a holiday blowjob. This was the Pied Piper of blowjobs—any guy who came in Carter’s mouth was going to follow him home.

  Oh shit. Any guy.

  “Carter!” Sandy tugged at his hair, not wanting to stop but feeling responsible. “Carter—I haven’t been tested in a few months. Th
ere’ve been guys.”

  Carter shoved his head forward until his lips were touching Sandy’s pubic hair, and Sandy thunked his head back against the wall and pounded at the wood with his fist.

  “Carter!”

  Carter pulled back and smiled beatifically at him. “Someday,” he said, like he was telling the best bedtime story ever, “you’re going to come in my mouth.”

  “You’re goddamned right I am,” Sandy vowed. “Now c’mon, up. We need a mattress and pillows and—”

  “And condoms and lube,” Carter promised, taking Sandy’s proffered hand and popping up to his feet. He stopped to slide Sandy’s pants up until Sandy could grab his belt and walk. Before they could move, though, he paused, capturing Sandy’s throat in the V of his forefinger and thumb. “And another kiss,” he begged.

  Sandy wouldn’t ever make him beg for that.

  Mmm . . . now Carter tasted like pumpkin pie and dick-breath, and Sandy wasn’t complaining. He felt Carter’s hands on his shoulders, and then he was the one being maneuvered, down the hall, past the bathroom and the guest room and the weight room, and then into the bedroom, the magic bedroom that Freckles would try to claw her way into.

  For Sandy it was just a matter of holding Carter’s face in his hands and stepping over the threshold.

  He paused when he saw the dog bed though, and Freckles waiting in the middle of it, tail waving.

  “Freckles, down,” he ordered, brooking no argument. Freckles trotted off the cushion and to the edge of the bed, and Sandy broke away enough to put the cushion on the floor in front of her, up near the head so nobody would step on her.

  She hopped down, and Carter paused in the middle of Sandy’s best kiss. “How’d you do that?”

  Sandy shrugged. “I want sex really bad, Carter. It puts some authority in your voice, it really, really does.”

  Carter pulled back and smiled transcendently. “Wow. It’s like a superpower.”

  And speaking of superpowers—that smile. Sandy kissed him again, hands everywhere, under Carter’s shirt, over his biceps, around his waist. He slid them down the back of Carter’s sweats, rewarded by Carter’s “Nungh . . .” and the way he bucked up against Sandy’s hip.

  “How do you want to do this?” Sandy whispered. “Do you want me to—”

  “I’ll top,” Carter whispered back. He punctuated that with a nibble on Sandy’s jaw. “I’m good at it.”

  Given the fairy-tale blowjob, Sandy was not going to ask why or how Carter thought that, he was going to let go of his pants and get naked.

  There was a flurry then—both of them leaving clothes in heaps on the floor, and Sandy sliding under the covers, trying not to shiver. Carter was still standing, pulling supplies from his end-table drawer, which he shoved discreetly under the pillow before turning off the light.

  “In the dark?” Sandy asked, although he could see the outline of Carter’s body clearly in the light from the window.

  “Yes,” Carter whispered, pushing his finger up the bridge of his nose like he was trying to push up the glasses Sandy had already taken off. “’Cause, uh, you know, that thing gets smaller in the light.”

  Sandy chuckled warmly, just as Carter slid into bed, and gasped as he felt the smoothness of skin slick up against his body—and something quite large prodding his thigh.

  “Not small,” he breathed, and then Carter’s mouth found his in the dark.

  The world became the touches of Carter’s hands on his flesh. Every rasp of palm or finger flared in the quiet haven of the bedroom, then expanded, grew fire-bright in the theater behind Sandy’s eyes. He could picture his nipples being pinched, or the look on Carter’s face as he suckled. And when Carter kissed down his torso, nipping along his stomach, every rub of his lips set off seismic nerve-quakes that rocked Sandy’s body until he was panting with need.

  If Carter’s kisses had been stealth-storms of attraction, his entire body was an earthquake and a tsunami all on the same shore.

  Devastating.

  Sandy grasped what he could of Carter’s short hair and tried not to clench his fingers. He didn’t want to stop, he didn’t even want to steer, but Carter’s mouth on his ribs, his navel, his abdomen—Oh my God, my cock, right there, on my cock!—stunned him.

  He could only gibber, spreading his knees and arching up in supplication.

  “Carter . . .” He felt helpless, which was a new feeling in bed, but as Carter engulfed him in heat and pressure, he had a sudden sense that he was yielding to this man—giving everything. He’d driven over on impulse—half-consumed with fear, nervous as hell—but he’d wanted so much for this man to be important . . .

  Carter squeezed his dick and tightened his mouth, and was suddenly the vibrant center of Sandy’s world.

  “Carter!” And now his name was a plea. “I can’t . . . please!”

  Carter moved up then and reached under the pillow, stopping to plunder Sandy’s mouth again with a half-strangled “So good!” as he pulled away.

  He prepped himself quickly and in a breath, he was poised at Sandy’s entrance, and even though this was not Sandy’s first barbecue, by a whole herd of beef, Sandy found he was holding Carter’s shoulders, begging for a moment—a heartbeat—because what he used to do for fun, or for sport, or with strangers just because it felt good when he was younger, had become grown-up and irrevocable.

  “Shh,” Carter soothed, running his lips down the side of Sandy’s face like he understood. “It’s real. You’re important. We’ll be okay.”

  Sandy wanted to ask him how he knew—because at the beginning of this, Sandy had been the one with all the answers—but his body was screaming for possession, building in anticipation, and like all lovers, there had to be a time for him to take things on faith.

  He moved his hands to Carter’s chest and playfully pinched his nipples, rolling his stomach and lifting his hips, pleading for Carter’s body to take charge of his right now.

  Carter breached him slowly.

  Sandy closed his eyes against it, loving the swell and the ache, the burn and the intrusion, the inescapable feeling of another person’s flesh embedded deeply inside his own.

  By the time he was fully impaled by Carter’s length, he was rocking back and forth with as much freedom as he had, needing more at the same time he dreaded it.

  “Oh God,” he hissed, clenching and releasing just to make sure that thing was as big as he thought it was. “Is it really bigger in the dark, or did you just not want to scare me?”

  Carter’s low and broken chuckle vibrated deep in Sandy’s core, and Sandy let out a groan.

  “Now, Carter,” he begged. “I need you to move now.”

  “Are you sure?” Carter bumped his nose playfully, and Sandy bucked against him, keening when Carter’s cockhead hit just where Sandy needed it to be.

  “Carter!”

  Carter put his lips next to Sandy’s ear. “I love it when you say my name,” he confessed almost shyly.

  “Fuck me harder and I’ll scream it,” Sandy promised, and Carter reared back and wham! A hard, sharp thrust, and another, and another, the slowness forgotten, the gentleness washed over with a thrilling barrage of need.

  For a brief moment, Sandy had a conscious thought, self-awareness in the eye of the hurricane, that he’d known it, known Carter had this level of passion inside him, this intensity—anyone who doted over a dog like Carter did had to have hidden reserves of animal.

  And then all consciousness was lost as his ass became the epicenter of the cataclysm that cracked the world.

  Or at least Sandy and Carter’s little corner of it.

  Carter pounded into him savagely, and Sandy urged him on, demanding, needing, loving every stroke. Carter was a quiet lover at first, only his harsh breaths punctuating the heaving greatness of his body, until a fractured keen punctured the air.

  “So close,” he grunted. “God . . . so close . . .”

  Sandy gathered himself enough to reach between them, gr
abbing himself, the contact of his own hand so alien he gasped—and then he got busy. Stroke, stroke, oh . . . oh gods, the first shiver of orgasm rushed his spine. He threw his head back and abandoned himself to the onslaught of Carter’s body, of climax, of tumbling headlong in love with a quiet man who loved a puppy.

  Carter let out a roar, the convulsions of his own orgasm causing him to rock sharply in short, hard thrusts until his arms gave out. He collapsed, sweating and trembling, into Sandy’s arms.

  And it was Sandy’s turn to reassure, pushing his sweaty hair off his face, kissing the corner of his mouth, whispering things in his ear.

  Silly things. Nonsense.

  Everything.

  “God, you’re amazing. Like . . . a hidden lover inside the lawyer. I can’t believe people didn’t just follow you into marriage for the blowjobs alone.”

  Carter’s half-embarrassed chuckle warmed him, brought some normalcy back into their Thanksgiving night. Carter slid off of him, separating their bodies and rolling on his side to look at Sandy with avid eyes.

  “Was good?” he asked anxiously.

  Sandy rolled onto his side too, pulling the cover up from knee level, where it had ruched, to under his arm so his upper body could cool off a little in the air. Carter did the same and moved closer, and they could feel the heat of each other’s body even if they weren’t touching.

  “Was great,” he said when they were situated, punctuating the words with a kiss. “I’m stunned, really. Why aren’t you knee-deep in men?”

  Carter rolled his eyes, looking abashed even in the dark. “I . . . well, I think that’s sort of how I got my last boyfriend, really. You know, went out drinking with some college friends, came home with a date. He just never went home for a couple of months—but he kept paying rent in his old place, so . . .”

  Sandy covered his face with his hand. “Carter, you are killing me.” He took his hand away. “Rules, baby. We have some rules here. Rule one—I don’t drive ’cross town from my Thanksgiving coma on my mother’s floor unless the guy is important, so this is important.”