Cuddling

by Allan, S. H.

“I didn’t think I did, but things change. People change.”

  “So we’ll… like in the book?”

  “Yeah, just like in the book. But I won’t make you bleed.”

  Finn slid his palms along Charlie’s collarbones and pushed the robe off his shoulders. He shrugged out of his own and rested his hands on Charlie’s waist. Naked and beautiful, they stood, brow to brow, each breathing the other’s breath. Softly Finn murmured, “I’d like it if you did.”

  Neither man told the other that he loved him; during the past weeks, all that needed to be said had been said. Time now to show their love in the age-old joining, male uniting with male in power and passion and pain. The first fluttering touch of tongues became a crushing of mouths, kisses as only two men can kiss. Arms gripping, strong as steel hawsers, slamming chest to chest, thigh to thigh. The desperate press of cocks, shifting, rolling, hot, and engorged.

  “Where? The bedroom?”

  “No. Here.”

  Hoarsely, Charlie said, “Sit on that chair.”

  At first touch chilly, the leather seat grew warm from Finn’s body. He looked around him: Wilde’s exquisite imagining made real—if it had been Wilde; it had never been proved that he had written the book. Did it excite you, baby? He smiled at the thought—Charlie irritably straightening the stack on the bedside table. Picking one out and riffling through the pages. Pausing, sitting on the bed, elbows on knees, becoming engrossed in the story. The scene in the carriage. In Teleny’s red room. Briancourt’s party and its unspeakable ending.

  “Don’t stop.” Charlie had been watching him. He came out of the bathroom and walked across to the chair, dropping his glasses on the arm of a settee. Without taking his eyes off him, he knelt between Finn’s legs, his hands on his thighs. “Don’t come.”

  Little slicking sounds as Finn’s hand slowed, the swollen head of his cock revealed, concealed by his gripping fist. He held the skin squeezed tightly down at the root of his cock, and the head bulged, the delicate V of its tie pulled taut. Consciously he relaxed the muscles of his belly and back, shutting his eyes as the first glimmers of orgasm receded.

  “Slide forward.” As Finn worked his hips over the leather to the edge of the chair, Charlie pushed his palms under his buttocks. “Bring your legs up.”

  He smelled so fucking good. No matter how thoroughly a man soaped himself, his body scent lingered. Faint, faint, but intoxicating, as much a part of him, as essential to his sexuality as his balls. Blindfolded, Charlie could have picked Finn out of a hundred men merely by his scent. He pressed his palm hard against the underside of his shaft, the tremendous vein, and licked the sac, working his tongue, sucking first one, then both balls into his mouth. Beautiful balls, tight, swollen with semen—

  “Fuck me, Charlie.”

  And just there, pink and perfect…. Charlie sat back on his heels. Not yet. He stroked a finger along the firm ridge of Finn’s perineum and touched it to the little rippled slot, his own cock cramping as Finn gave a low moan of pleasure. So soft, damp velvet like the gills of a mushroom. Tiny.

  “Please.”

  “What, baby?”

  “Kiss it.”

  He’d recoiled from this for so long. Why had he? It was clean and lovely and tasted faintly of salt from the soap. He circled his tongue, and then, parting the cheeks, he began to suck, rhythmically drawing the flesh into his mouth as he did with Finn’s nipples. It was nothing, then, to take the further step. As he pressed the tip of his tongue inward, the thought came with a force that ratcheted his arousal to delirium. I’m inside him, I’m licking inside his arse, I’m—

  “Change places.” Finn stood, straddling Charlie’s thighs, and watched him squeeze a thick coil of lube onto his fingers. Slippery cool as Charlie prepared him, fingers brushing around, around and pressing in. “Let me,” he said, taking the tube and stroking a glistening veil of gel over Charlie’s shaft, stark and upright in his lap.

  “Tell me if I hurt you. We can stop.”

  “It’s part of it.” His thighs wide, Finn shuffled forward and lowered his hips, pausing to let Charlie center his cock, the blunt head seeking entry. A twinge of warning when he pressed down.

  “Open for me, Finn. Push.”

  “Ah, fuck, ah fuck—”

  “Push me out.”

  “Oh God—”

  A brief moment of splintering pain and a slithering glide.

  Finn’s throat arched as he took Charlie high into his body. Sweat broke out on his back, sticky under Charlie’s stroking palms, but when he opened his eyes to his lover’s gaze, he already knew the truth of it. This was what he had yearned for, all unknowing. To be mastered. To be penetrated. To have the void in him filled. Shock had softened him, but when Charlie clutched his arse, easing him forward, hot blood returned in a rushing flood. Rocking, gently rocking, Finn felt the stiff shaft slide, friction igniting nerves, flashing spangles of pleasure through his gut, his cock. He raised up, thigh muscles quivering, and sank down again, his body moving in the age-old rhythm for which it had been made. “I want to feel it. Feel you come in me.”

  Charlie groaned, already teetering on the edge. “Not yet. You first.”

  “Do it.” Finn wrapped Charlie’s hand around his cock, as rigid now as the shaft impaling him. “Get me there.”

  Hard, fast, Charlie stroked his lover. He watched the muscles of Finn’s belly ripple and clench and heard the cry he always gave moments before he came. All control lost, he thrust violently again and again into Finn’s arse and then stilled, so racked by the ecstasy of his orgasm that he hardly felt the spurts of Finn’s semen raining on his face; it wasn’t until he opened his eyes and smiled that he licked them from his lips.

  “HURTING?” Charlie ran his foot up and down Finn’s shin.

  “A bit.” He lifted his hips to straighten the towel under him. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to walk tomorrow, big boy.”

  “Have to. Busy day.” Strong and steady, Charlie felt Finn’s heartbeat under his palm. He rubbed his face into the dense mat of hair, finding the nipple and giving it a teasing bite. “Have to get used to it.”

  “You reckon?”

  “No doubt about it.”

  Charlie shut his eyes and pulled the coverlet over their shoulders. He was drifting pleasantly into sleep when Finn’s wakeful fidgeting roused him. “It is hurting you, isn’t it?”

  “No. It feels… odd, but it feels good. I like it. I can feel your sperm, kind of seeping out.” After a few moments he went on. “It wasn’t only Teleny fucked Des Grieux, you know.”

  Charlie’s eyes snapped open.

  Finn raised himself on one elbow and hovered over him, a handsome shadow in the dark. “Des Grieux fucked Teleny too. A lot.”

  “Yes.” Charlie turned onto his back and opened his arms. “He did, didn’t he?”

  RHIDIAN BRENIG JONES is a Welshman who has herded sheep in New Zealand, taught English in Poland, and run a bar on the Costa del Sol. Now settled back home in Wales, he leads an adult literacy program and writes whenever he can snatch a spare hour or two. Rhidian lives with his partner, Michael, and their two arthritic old Labradors. He is still trying and failing to master the acoustic guitar.

  The Thing I Love Best About Mitch

  Dawn Douglas

  “DAMMIT, Tyler.”

  The words were delivered in Mitchell’s best intimidating growl—usually reserved for undergraduates who thought three science credits, less than minimum wages, and free room and board as volunteers at one of Mitch’s environmentally at-risk sites meant they were going to have a summer of ease playing grabass and running around on the beach picking up pieces of trash every now and then. Too bad for him, I was immune to the tone.

  “Honey, I’m home,” I replied, voice deadpan, and shrugged my backpack off one shoulder, depositing it on the chair by the door beside my shoes.

  My lover shot me a dirty look, shoved one hand through his hair, and paced a back-and-forth circuit of our entryway. Wat
ching him, I was pretty sure he hadn’t just started the pacing thing. I was also pretty sure he didn’t really appreciate my humor either.

  “Have you been doing that since I left?” I asked, careful to keep my tone light. I didn’t expect an answer, but experience has taught me that the best way to deal with Mitch when he’s in a mood is not to let myself get drawn into it.

  Ignoring the question—big surprise—Mitchell shifted his attention away from my face. He turned his glare on the backpack. “You need a briefcase,” he announced. “You shouldn’t be carrying that ratty thing. I could get you a briefcase. I’ll buy you a damn—what’s the brand that Pete in marketing totes around? Larry Wilson? Lucas Winston?”

  “Louis Vuitton?”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, that. I’ll buy you one of those briefcases.”

  I couldn’t stop the scoff that rose in my throat. “Mitchell, if you buy me a $3,000 briefcase, I’ll kill you. Besides, I don’t want a briefcase. My backpack works fine. It’s got sentimental value.”

  He knew I was talking about the fact that he’d gotten me the pack eight years ago, when I’d been one of the annoying undergrads spending his summer interning for credits and slave wages at the Biofield Watch Project. Although in my defense, I hadn’t been expecting to play grabass when I joined the project. I’d actually been excited about the job.

  At twenty-eight years old, Mitchell Masters had designed and built the most innovative oil spill cleanup technology on the market today, and the fact that it had turned into a resounding commercial success and made him a very rich man when he sold it just meant he had more time to spend out in the field, working on-site to manage cleanup efforts at actual spill sites.

  That first summer for me was his third moonlighting as a wealthy philanthropist in environmentalists’ clothing, and I’d barely been a blip on the guy’s radar. He’d thrown a worn North Face backpack at my head one afternoon when the strap on my cheap pack broke, and I had to scramble not to drop the three gallon jugs of drinking water it had been holding into the swamp our team was trudging through at the time. That night, fooling around with my roommate in the crappy furnished studio apartment Biofield Watch used to house their interns, I’d had to bite my lip not to say Mitch’s name when I came. Because giving me a backpack had definitely been inadvertent fuel for my crush. Probably my roommate, Robert, wouldn’t have cared too much, but still—it seemed a little rude.

  Mitchell took me a little more seriously my second summer. Apparently, not many volunteers came back for more after they realized just how hot, miserable, and exhausting the work was. But I was heading into grad school at Duke’s Wetland Center the next fall. Biofield Watch, and therefore Mr. Masters, were loosely affiliated with the center. That, plus my small crush and vague sense of hero worship, meant that unlike the other undergrads, Mitch would have had to beat me off with a stick to keep me from coming back to the project. He and I had even had a few offhand talks about my future career goals during set up week, nothing overly serious, but considering I hung on pretty much his every word, they’d felt significant to me. We were sloughing around, planting soil probes, when we had our first actual deep conversation.

  “Hey, kid, is that my backpack?”

  At twenty-three I was less than ten years younger than Mitch and didn’t exactly consider myself a kid, but since we were the only two people in shouting distance, and since it was, in fact, his backpack, I figured he was talking to me. “Yeah—actually. You gave it to me last year. Did you, um, want it back?”

  He’d given me a look like he was actually seeing me for the first time, his gaze running up and down my body from head to toe in a way that made me feel decidedly tingly. Then he said no and went back to work.

  At this point in our lives together, I can admit that “deep conversation” might be a bit of a stretch, but hey, it was a turning point. Kind of. It actually took me two more summers, a master’s in chemistry with a thesis on soil science, and said backpack full of smuggled bottles of tequila and beer at a spill site off the coast of Florida to convince Mitch to fuck me. But he had, and we’d been together through my entire PhD. As it always did, reference to the pack prompted in him a dual reaction—irritation because it reminded him that he’d been an ass when I met him, and fondness because I’d been too tenacious to give up like a sane person would have. It takes a special man to smile and frown at the same time, but Mitchell could do it.

  It was one of the things I loved best about him.

  “Fine, then.” He crossed his arms over his chest, still not happy, but with a slightly mellower growl. “How about a nice watch?”

  “Mitch.”

  “A Montblanc pen?”

  “Mitchell.”

  “A motorcycle?”

  “Damn it, Masters!”

  There was a heartbeat of silence, and then we were both laughing. Mitchell’s chuckles were deep and quiet, and they sent a shiver of awareness through my stomach. I loved to hear Mitch laugh. He didn’t do it often enough, and when he did, he almost seemed surprised to find out he remembered how.

  The laughter didn’t last long, but it was enough to lighten the mood. Before Mitchell’s half smile could melt away, I reached up and grabbed his wrist and pulled him down onto the sofa with me when I flopped onto my spot on the couch. I landed with a grunt and sank into the cushions. It wasn’t much to look at, but the old plaid couch in the center of our family room was damn comfortable. It’s funny. I knew academically that Mitch had something like as much money as God, but you sure as shit couldn’t tell it from looking at his furniture. Or his clothes. Or his car. That was another one of the things I loved best about him.

  Mitchell opened his mouth to say something, but I held up a hand before he could. “I love that you want to get me something, Mitch, but it isn’t necessary.”

  “I think that’s up to me, isn’t it? It’s not every day you’re awarded your doctorate, Mr. Freeman.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Freeman?”

  “You haven’t walked the stage yet, Doc,” Mitchell countered.

  “Semantics.” I reached out and threaded my fingers through his, then raised his hand to my lips and kissed the back of it. “But you can call me Mr. Freeman as long as you want. I like it. Usually means I’m going to get lucky,” I finished with a grin.

  Mitchell’s eyes darkened from aqua to turquoise, and I took that as my cue. Lifting up, I put one knee on either side of his hips and straddled his lap, resting my weight on his thighs.

  “Tyler—” Desire warred with frustration in his voice.

  “Mitchell—” I replied, teasing, and brought my face close to his neck. I intended to lick his pulse point—he loved that—but I paused for a second and breathed deeply. As it always did, the familiar smell of him touched something deep inside me.

  “We have to talk about this.”

  “We already did,” I said into his collar. “I told you what I wanted.”

  Then I was kissing him, my lips blazing a trail down the side of his throat. Maybe it was unfair, but I didn’t care. I wanted to distract him, and in the two years we’d been living together, I’d learned exactly how to do it.

  “It’s not a good idea, Tyler.” But he ended on a moan, and I felt a flash of triumph when his hands drifted down my body to grasp my hips. He pulled me toward him, grinding the panel of my fly into the erection clearly outlined beneath his jeans.

  “This feels like a very, very good idea,” I countered, then pushed his head to the side so I could nip at the cord on the side of his very sexy neck.

  “You know what I mean.”

  I ignored the words and moved in to bite his earlobe as I started unbuttoning his shirt. Mitch had an amazing body. Tanned and muscled from almost constant work outdoors, his chest was a thing of beauty. He let me push the shirt off of his shoulders and sucked in a breath when I leaned down to lick and then pull at his nipples.

  “Christ,” he hissed, but let me play for a few minutes
before his hands moved up, fingers delving into my hair. I felt a thrill of excitement when he tugged me away and pushed me down to the floor between his spread knees.

  “What do you want?” Mitch demanded, voice rough. My cock strained against the front of my pants in response, and I leaned forward, trying to press my face into the apex of his thighs, but he wouldn’t let me.

  I struggled against his hold, letting myself fall easily into the game, and answered, panting. “I want you. I always want you.”

  A smile played at the corner of his mouth, and he pushed me gently away. “Hm. You want me? Stand up, then. Let’s see what I’m getting. If I decide to let you have me.”

  I rolled eagerly back on my heels and stood. Mitch’s playful-with-a-side-of-domineering mood was absolutely one the things I loved best about him. I waited impatiently to see what he was going to do next. He didn’t make me wait long. His voice, we he spoke, was deliciously bored.

  “Well, I can’t tell anything with you dressed like that. Take off your shirt.”

  I grinned and rushed to pull my T-shirt over my head. “Is that better?”

  “A bit,” he replied dismissively. “But I think I need to see more before I decide. Pants, please.”

  My fingers fumbled a bit with the button, and I started to pull my jeans down.

  “Wait.” Mitch said sharply.

  I froze.

  “Turn around, and do it slowly.”

  My heart sped in my chest as I slowly did as I was told. Swiveling to face away from him, I could see myself reflected in the dark television screen over the fireplace. No one but Mitch had ever made me look that way—fucked out and blown away before he even really touched me. The fact that he could get that kind of reaction from me was without a doubt one of the things I loved best about him.

  “Now, push them down.” His voice was a soft growl, velvety and firm.

  I slowly pushed my pants down my legs and stepped carefully out of them, barely breathing as I waited to see what my lover would do next. I jumped a little when I felt his rough palms reach up to cradle my hips, pulling me backward. His breath was hot against my ass through the fabric of my briefs.