by Gregory Ashe
Shaw covered his mouth with a hand.
Yanking Shaw’s hand away, North said, “—and you had to have been sticky for weeks because—”
This time, Shaw used both hands. Then they were wrestling again, and this time, North ended up on top. He carried a lot more muscle, and no matter how Shaw contorted himself, he couldn’t get away. North’s grip tightened on his wrists, and he leaned forward, his mouth catching Shaw’s in a kiss that was gentle for an instant before a gunpowder flare of savagery that left Shaw panting.
Eyes intense, North plucked off Shaw’s Chelsea boots and tossed them across the room. He curled his fingers under the waistband of the leggings and pulled them down. Then Shaw was naked, buoyed up on an ocean of cold air, gasping as North took him in his mouth. He shuddered, rocked against the wet heat, and made a noise.
North chuckled, slurped loudly around his dick, and chafed Shaw’s bare thighs with his hands.
“Careful,” Shaw said, a little frightened by the unsteadiness of his own voice. “The doctor said I can’t have any more skin grafts down there.”
North pulled off him with a soft pop. He smacked Shaw’s leg, feigned irritation and a smirk mixing in his expression. Then he froze, and fear rushed into his face.
“It’s ok,” Shaw whispered, stroking North’s cheek.
North shook his head. “What I did at the club, when I hit you.”
“Come on, North. I know the difference. And I like when you bully me. I like when you get a little physical. In the fun ways, I mean. The way we always have.”
North’s eyes were full of unshed tears.
“I said I can’t have any more skin grafts down there,” Shaw prompted with a gentle smile.
North blinked rapidly. His voice was an approximation of itself when he said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Teeth.”
His voice was a little stronger. “I was being so goddamn nice to you.”
“Right, I know, but there are only so many places on the body they can get skin for those grafts, and—”
North’s palm cracking against his thigh made Shaw howl, but when he saw the uncertainty on North’s face, he grinned and nodded.
“Stay right fucking there.” North got off the bed and turned himself out of boots and clothes with a ferocious singlemindedness. The diffuse light glowed in the tiny golden hairs along his shoulders. Muscles flexed in his arms. The curve of his back was sinuous, and for a moment, his spine was an arrow pointing to the cleft of his ass cheeks. Then he kicked everything toward the closet, burying the white briefs.
At the nightstand, he took out a bottle of lube and tossed it to Shaw. Then he took out a condom and held it up.
Shaw nodded. He spread his legs, squirted some lube on his fingers, and reached down.
With a snort, North shook his head. “You wish.”
“Please? It’s something that I don’t—I just mean, I feel really close to you when we—”
“But this is about what I want.” North’s face was innocent, but his eyes were devilish. “Isn’t that what you told me?”
“North.”
“Changing your mind so fast?”
“No, no. Whatever you want.”
The smile wasn’t even a hint. It was like the photographic negative of a smile: there but hidden, waiting to come out under the right conditions. North sat on Shaw’s thighs. He opened the condom. Then he placed the rubber on the tip of Shaw’s dick, already red and leaking, and began to roll it down. Shaw joined him with one hand.
North made an irritated noise. “I’m doing this.”
“I like when we touch there together.”
“Too bad.” When Shaw hesitated, North looked up, one eyebrow arched.
“You’re being really mean,” Shaw said as he pulled his hand away.
“I was being sweet as pie until you had to be a smartass.” North finished rolling the condom down. He applied lube, his fist a tight, textured ring, and Shaw thrust into the coil of his fingers. But it was just once, and then North was pulling his hand away, shifting his weight until he could get a hand between his own legs, his breathing stalling out and then quickening as he worked himself open.
“I could—”
“No.”
“North!”
“No more talking.”
Shaw opened his mouth.
“What I want, remember? And I don’t want any more talking.”
Settling back, Shaw stuck out his tongue.
The sack tap was on the right side of hard—enough sting in North’s hands to send a full-body charge through Shaw, but soft enough that Shaw’s dick only got harder.
“Keep it up,” North said, the words barely more than grunts now as he stretched himself. His mouth wasn’t closing fully when he breathed. “Be a brat.”
A flush burned in his face. Sweat gleamed on his brow, on his cheeks, on his neck. Under the dense blond fur, his nipples were sharp pink points. Shaw made a noise in his throat and reached down, fingers sliding along latex.
“No.” The word was an explosion of breath.
Shaw whined.
“Move. Move your hand.” Crabbing forward on his knees, North swatted Shaw’s hand away. He drizzled lube along the length of Shaw’s cock again. Then he set himself, and with a sitting back movement, took Shaw inside him.
Even through the condom, the clench of dark, hot muscle made Shaw mutter, “Oh God.” He arched his back, trying to bury himself deeper, but North bore down on him, holding him in place with his weight. A soft, but surprisingly loud, slap to Shaw’s chest pulled him out of the daze; lust had gone through his brain like a brushfire, clearing out the dead wood; the last things left were easy to see now, easy to understand. He understood the slap, understood the echo back to that horrible night in The Backhoe’s parking lot. He understood the question. He met North’s eyes—searching eyes—and grinned, tracing the tingling heat where his skin was pinkening, then running his fingers over to tweak his own nipple.
The worry on North’s face dissolved into arousal. He raised himself an inch and dropped down again, the slide of textured warmth making Shaw exhale sharply. Shaw reached forward, groping the hard muscles of North’s chest. The blond fur was already matted with sweat. He found one of those sharp, pink nipples and pinched. The noise North made was arousal and need, but mostly it was helplessness, the sound of his body slipping beyond his control in response to other hands.
“Huh.” North panted. “Huh. Huh. No. Don’t. Uh. Hands behind your fucking head.”
Shaw whined, thumbing the areola, and North grabbed his wrists and forced his hands back.
“Don’t be so fucking—” When Shaw bucked up, North’s breath whistled, and he swore. It took him a moment to steady himself, his hands like iron around Shaw’s wrists. “Don’t be so fucking greedy. Hands.” Another thrust up, more of that overwhelmed swearing. “Behind. Oh God. Behind your fucking head.”
Grinning, Shaw put his hands behind his head.
“God, you’re pretty,” North whispered, stroking out the last of the prickling heat in the pink skin of Shaw’s chest. “You’re being so good. You’re just going to lie there, totally still, completely silent, and let me use that nice dick to make myself feel good. Isn’t that right?”
The noise Shaw made came from deep in his throat, and it didn’t have words.
North was true to his promise: he used Shaw’s dick to make himself feel good, changing speed and angle and position. Shaw knew when North found what he wanted because North let out a shocked, punched-out breath. His whole body stiffened, alternating between tightening around Shaw until it was almost painful and then bearing down, trying to force him out. And then, once North found it, he went to it again and again, breaking up the intensity by varying the way their bodies met.
For Shaw, it was torture. North’s sweat ran down onto him, and he could smell the mixture of their arousal, their bodies. The con
stant stimulation of his dick, combined with the psychological rush of giving this to North, giving him whatever he wanted, carried him to the edge of orgasm. He hung there. North seemed to know how much he could take, slowing down whenever Shaw threatened to tip over.
Then something changed. North found that spot inside himself and came down on Shaw’s dick again and again. His dick twitched, and a few drops of thick, white come spattered Shaw’s belly. He closed his eyes, and tears ran down his cheeks. When he opened them again, he caught Shaw in his gaze, and he spoke in punctured, breathless bursts.
“Feel that?”
He must have meant his body squeezing Shaw, the grip of him. Shaw whimpered and nodded.
“Where are you? Talk to me.”
“Close.” After so long quiet, Shaw heard his own voice like a stranger’s. “God, I’m so close.”
“Not yet. Not yet.” North made another of those shocked noises, like whatever he’d done to himself had been beyond anything he’d expected. “Because. Because I don’t want you to. And this is about what I want.”
Shaw moaned.
“Yeah?” North’s pace slowed, probably so he could form coherent thoughts. “Got your brains all fucked out?” Shaw nodded frantically. “Are you going to remember this the next time you think about teasing me? Yeah, you are. You’re going to remember this. Remember that I’ll take it out of your ass.” A cheeky grin broke out across his flushed, sweating face. “Or out of my ass, depending on how I feel. Now, give me that dick.”
He raised himself up slightly, freeing Shaw’s body, and Shaw rutted into him. He met North on every thrust, North controlling the angle, Shaw driving up with all the need and lust bottled up inside him.
He was watching North’s face when the orgasm hit, and it shattered North.
“Oh my Jesus,” North moaned, and then his dick flopped, spraying come all over Shaw, the bed, even his own legs. North managed to rock himself through part of it, and then he fell forward, still shuddering in the throes of the orgasm, his body pulling off Shaw.
Shaw ripped the condom off and jerked himself. A white wave crested, blotting everything. Almost everything. He could hear the sound of his load spattering against North’s back.
For a while, they lay there, sweat-slick and tangled. Then North rolled onto his side, groaned, and whispered, “I’m not going to be able to walk for a week. Fuck. I’m not going to be able to sit down.”
With a sleepy chuckle, Shaw flopped onto his side too, drawing North’s arm over him. North scooted closer until they were spooning. He gave a tired kiss to the side of Shaw’s neck and let out a contented breath. His breathing evened out.
“North?”
The answering noise sounded only half conscious.
“I love you.”
Deep, even breaths came back.
In a whisper, because he didn’t want to wake him, Shaw said, “I’m sorry I messed everything up and—ow! North, I think you broke the skin!”
North kissed the bite on Shaw’s shoulder, just below where it joined his neck. His lips felt chapped and rough and wonderful. “I love you too. Now, for the love of God, please let me sleep off this fuck.”
Chapter 29
THE BLONDIE-BRICK house on Winona rippled behind the heat shimmering up from the asphalt. It was late afternoon. The GTO’s air conditioning hissed in the vents. Outside, the street was still and dead, strangled by the intensity of the late summer day. The only activity was the rumble and buzz of cheap speakers in an ancient Buick; its buggy-whip antenna bobbed in time with the beat.
North had napped, showered, and eaten half a pizza from Fortel’s while Shaw picked off pepperoni, explaining the ills of cured meats, and then had to eat the entire stack of pepperoni, all by itself, to prove to North he could open his mouth that wide. Low-hanging fruit, North decided, and let the joke go.
Now the house waited for him behind the waves of heat in the air. North took a deep breath, turned the GTO’s wheels away from the curb, and killed the engine. A quick escape. Hell, you never knew.
He made his way along the side of the house. Jasper was eating grass. Jones was curled up in the shade of a linden sapling that wasn’t supposed to be there. In the fall, when it wasn’t hot as fuck, North would need to come dig the damn thing up; he didn’t even know how long it had been growing. He let himself into the sunporch. The air was warm, muggy, with the reek of the litter box and an unwashed body underlying the pall of cigar smoke. Not just an unwashed body; an old one. Farther back in the house, the window unit was chugging, chugging, chugging, and then it seized up. After a heartbeat, it gave a rattling sigh before chug, chug, chug again. North worked on the louvered window next to the door, but one of the louvers was stuck. The crank wouldn’t turn. Then he thought maybe the crank was stuck, so he put a little elbow into it. The crank handle twisted in the shaft, tilting under the pressure so that one side rode up. As North’s hand came around, the crank settled back into place, pinching his finger. He swore, shook out the sting, and sucked on the red mark; blood blister, he bet.
“Who’s out there?”
“It’s me, Dad.”
An answering grunt came back.
North headed into the house proper. His dad was in the kitchen, standing at the counter in a brown terrycloth bathrobe. The red leather purse was gone. In its place stood a million different prescription vials. Pills too, obviously dumped out so that he could organize them: little white round ones, yellow diamond shapes, big fat blues that might have been horse tranquilizers. A weekly pill organizer sat next to them, all the tiny plastic covers open. He’d hung the cannula from the frame of his walker, and he was smoking a cigar. When he saw North, he blew out a stream of smoke, adding to the haze.
“What are you doing?” North asked, sucking on his finger again. Blood blister for sure.
“Stop putting your finger in your mouth. You look like a goddamn queer.”
North thought there was something to be said about grown men putting phallic objects in their mouth to suck on, but instead he shrugged. “I am a queer.”
“You know what I mean.” His dad drew hard on the cigar; the ember flared. He picked up one of the vials, squinted at the label, and then took some of the yellow diamonds and distributed them in the organizer. He looked grayer than usual today, his skin drained of color. When he set down the vial, the tremor in his hand sent it shivering across the laminate countertop. David McKinney steadied himself on the walker. Then he frowned. He looked at the vials and the pills. He picked up the one he had been holding.
“You already did that one.”
“I know that, God damn it.” He set it down too quickly and grabbed the next one. The pills rattled inside.
“Have you eaten today?”
“I ate.”
“What?”
“I ate. What does it matter what?”
“Braunschweiger and crackers and beer? You need to be getting healthy stuff, Dad. Some salads. More vegetables.” North looked around the kitchen: the ancient, puttering fridge; the old pots soaking in the sink’s greasy water; the crust of burnt food on the range. “I should be picking up groceries and making a few meals for you, easy stuff you can warm up. I’ll take a couple days off next week and we’ll get this place cleaned up too.”
“I’m telling you I ate. I don’t know why you’re turning this into a federal case.”
“Maybe some V8. We’ll keep it in the fridge, nice and cold, for days you don’t feel hungry. That way you still get some vegetables.”
“Jesus Christ.” His dad looked up from the big fat blues. “You’re not drunk. Are you high?”
“No. Hey, can you do those in a minute?”
“I’m doing them now.”
“I know, but can you do them in a minute? I want to talk to you.” North took a breath, got a lungful of smoke, and finished with a wheezing “About last time I was here.”
“God damn it. Not this again.” His dad
grabbed the walker, cigar still clamped between his teeth, and hobbled toward the front room. The cannula, hung across the walker’s frame, dragged the oxygen tank behind it, and then the tank fell with a clatter.
“Hold on,” North said, hurrying around the counter. “You’re all tangled.”
His dad bent, knocking aside North’s hands, and said, “I got it.”
“No, that’s caught—”
“I said I got it.”
“Let me—”
“Christ on the cross!”
The movement was sudden: the ratcheting back of the once-powerful body, the familiar cock of the arm. North dropped back on his ass. The movement was instinctive. Worse, it was childlike. And as the first rush of adrenaline dropped and embarrassment came flooding in, he realized his dad had been hitching up the robe.
“Good fucking Lord,” David McKinney muttered. “My only goddamn son is a flincher.”
North picked himself up.
“What?” David McKinney said. He sucked on the cigar and jetted smoke to the side. “We had a few beers, we had a scrap, and now you’re scared of me.”
It was like a door opening. You just walk through it, as easy as that.
“Yes,” North said. “I’ve been scared of you my whole life.”
The refrigerator’s compressor whomped. The AC chugged. Outside, the summer day was stagnant and silent.
“And I love you,” North said quietly. “That’s a messed-up combination, but it’s the truth, and it explains a lot.”
His dad made a face around the cigar. He rubbed his shoulder. “So now I’m responsible for, what? Anything that goes wrong in your life? That’s on me? Well, I’ve got news for you: that’s life. You can blame your folks because some head-shrinker tells you to, but that’s life.”
“I’m not trying to blame you. And I’m not trying to make you feel bad. I want to talk to you about this because it’s important to me. Because we never talk about anything.”
“This is him. This is that prissy little spoiled son of a bitch. He got in your head.”
“Please don’t talk about Shaw like that.”