by Cat T. Mad
Bennett had listened attentively. He was surprised at the frank words of the woman, and at the same time, he felt sympathy that the life of the Reddingtons had taken such a disagreeable course.
“But now you are there for Jethro, and in my opinion, it is the most important thing. Nobody can change the past, but you have the opportunity to help your grandchild in any possible way, and I am not talking about money. You are his family, and he urgently needs you on his side, more than ever,” the butler replied softly.
The woman nodded, and she asked him all of a sudden, “Your tasks have profoundly changed in the house of the Reddingtons, Bennett. Do you still want to stay with me?”
His eyes grew wide with surprise. “Of course,” he answered immediately, because nothing was further from his mind than giving up his employment.
Aethel Reddington nodded contentedly, but then he received the impression that she wanted to say something in addition. Absentmindedly, she shook her head and whispered to herself, “We will see how everything will work out.”
A Matter of the Heart
His heart was beating faster, the closer he and Aethel approached the hospital room. Automatically he thought of the brief kiss he had received yesterday and of the slight blush which subsequently had flashed over Jethro’s cheeks. Bennett suppressed a pant that wanted to escape from his throat, and he felt that the palms of his hands were getting increasingly moist. For a moment, he was convinced that he even hadn’t been more nervous before the job interview with the Reddingtons.
He was confused when he spotted the small sign which was fixed on the door of the room. The lettering advised them not to disturb. Aethel and Bennett took a seat on two of the chairs which were arranged close by.
“Pull that damned hose out now!” resounded from the room a few minutes later.
It could clearly be heard that Jethro was in a bad mood. To Bennett’s surprise, Aethel volunteered an amused giggle.
“Obviously, the boy is feeling better,” the old lady announced and smiled.
They heard the voice of a woman, however they couldn’t understand her words, but when Jethro shouted out loud, “NO!”, his grandmother giggled again.
Bennett smiled quietly to himself, because it was the first time after an eternity that he saw the woman so cheerfully. It felt good to see Aethel Reddington in this mood.
Several seconds later, the butler knew which hose the talk was about, because an annoyed nurse left the room, while she held a catheter inclusive a collecting container in her hands.
“I suppose we can go in now, can’t we?” Aethel asked, and she curiously looked at the door.
Bennett wasn’t sure, and therefore he merely shrugged his shoulders. The old lady got up, and after a brief knock on the door, she opened it, before he could attend to his duty as a butler. Bennett saw the man darting a furious glance in the direction of the entrance, but his facial expression immediately brightened, when he noticed who entered his room. Jethro gave his grandmother a smile, but when he recognized Bennett, his smile became even toothier. The butler had a feeling that he would blush any moment, and he looked at the floor with embarrassment for a second. He felt a trickling sensation in his stomach, his racing heartbeats and a certain nervousness which was dancing through his veins. He wondered in amazement, how such a brief kiss could turn his world upside down.
Bennett adjusted a chair for Aethel, and he was just about to leave the room again. It wasn’t appropriate to stand beside Mrs. Reddington when she wanted to talk to her grandson, and so he decided to wait in the hallway, although he would have preferred to stay close to Jethro.
“Where do you want to go?” Aethel asked him with surprise.
“Well…I…wait outside?” Bennett answered perplexedly.
“Why that?” the old lady inquired.
Bennett was astounded, and he lifted his eyebrows. The corners of his mouth twitched for a moment, “Because I am your butler?”
“Sit down, Ben,” Jethro requested him.
His stomach made a somersault, because of the man’s soft tone of voice, and the fact that he had abbreviated his name caused a slight quiver in his heart. He darted at Aethel Reddington an inquiring look, but she supported Jethro’s request with a firm nod.
He didn’t know what he could reply, and so he unceremoniously took a seat on a chair in the corner. While Aethel was talking to Jethro, Bennett allowed himself to scrutinize the man as inconspicuously as it was possible. His cheeks still were sullen, but not nearly as dramatically as they had been on their first encounter and in hospital during the first weeks. His blond hair had reached a certain length again, and they stuck out in all possible directions which made the other man unintentionally look like a rebel. A dark spot on his cheekbone was a reminder of his accident, and Bennett didn’t know if this trace remained forever, but it didn’t look like a flaw at all. It simply was there, and it was a part of Jethro in the meantime, as well as the slightly reddened scar that ran on the side of his neck. Bennett observed his mouth when he spoke, and his white, sporadically flashing teeth. Repeatedly, Jethro’s blue eyes flickered in his direction. The glances of the man were unfathomable, and they made Bennett’s heart tumble. He felt a silent desire to run his hand over the face of the man, to charm a smile out of him, and for a split second, he longed for the look the man had darted at him on the previous day. The yearning pain inside him increased, and Bennett looked at the floor for a moment. Subsequently, he stared at his fingers, and he asked himself the question which feelings he harbored for Jethro Reddington.
He furrowed his brows, when he realized that Mrs. Reddington’s facial expression hadn’t shown any astonishment or surprise, when the other one had addressed him with Ben.
The scratching noise of a chair that was pushed across the floor started him from his reflections, and Bennett lifted his head. He saw that Mrs. Reddington was about to get up, and he immediately did the same. Swiftly he was at her side.
“You can stay here, Bennett. I will call for a taxi at the reception. I have a feeling that Jethro would be glad if you kept company with him for a while.”
Bennett’s jaw dropped open a bit, and when he wanted to take a breath in order to respond something, she maternally stroked his cheek, and she planted a kiss on the forehead of her grandson and vanished smilingly.
Bennett looked behind her as if he had encountered a ghost.
“I had long conversations with her before I had to leave for the rehab clinic,” Jethro said softly, and with this he redirected the butler’s attention from the door.
Bennett’s brown eyes searched the ones of the other man, and his facial expression requested Jethro to speak on.
“I suppose I had to draw a clear line under certain things, and among others, under the hiding of the fact that I am gay. I wanted to offer her the possibility to dissociate herself from me if she couldn’t deal with it. If Charles was still alive, I would never have dared this step. I…” Jethro interrupted himself in the middle of his sentence, and he looked out of the window.
Bennett slowly approached the bed and he sat down, likewise he did it on the previous evening, on the edge. He moved his hand, and he would have loved nothing better than reaching out for the one of the other man, but somehow he didn’t have the courage to do it, and so he pulled it away.
“I have told her that I like you, and that’s the reason why she behaves this way. I…I hope that you are not too embar…” the man stopped talking once again.
“I like you, too,” Bennett replied frankly.
Jethro turned around to him one more time, and his gaze was unfathomably resting on his face. The other man took his hand in his own one, and he absentmindedly stroked gently along the slightly blue veins. Bennett abruptly got goose bumps as a reaction to this soft touch.
“You already made my knees quiver when I stepped out of the car months ago, Bennett True. While I was drugged with cocaine to my eyeballs, you stood in front of the house, and you looked at m
e with a serenity that infuriated me, and thereby I was more attracted to you than I have ever been to any other man I had encountered before,” Jethro revealed. “I have always been an eyecatcher, no matter where I have shown up. My God, I was such a self-regarding asshole, and at the very moment, when I set eyes on you for the first time, I had the wish to be a completely different person. You have set my world on fire, and I thought when I upset you, I wouldn’t be enamored to you anymore. I had a feeling that you had a hold on me, although we didn’t know each other. I was more and more embarrassed by my own behavior, and I poured down my shame. Each flicker of your eyes has increased my fascination for you, and when your facial expression was about to derail, you were for me like the light for a moth, and I wished you would disappear.”
Jethro became silent, while his revelations left Bennett speechless.
“Shitfaced and drunken trains of thought, whereas I cannot reconstruct a great deal of them anymore,” the man continued in a soft voice. “I have frequently wished to turn back the time, to get out of the car with a clear head, and to give you a smile that would overwhelm you. To be flirtatious with you in order to find out if you let yourself in for it, to steal a kiss from you which you would have longed for, but what did I do instead of this? I insulted you, provoked you and presented myself as a human scum who has deserved a lot, but no benevolence at all.”
Bennett noticed that a tear was running down the man’s cheek, and he lifted his free hand in order to wipe it tenderly away.
“When I entered this room a while ago, your smile robbed my breath and my heart skipped a beat. And if there is something I am longing for, then it is a kiss,” Bennett whispered.
Jethro looked at him, and these blue eyes encouraged him to give in to his beating heart. When their lips touched this time, it wasn’t brief, but careful and tender.
Epilog
Bennett carefully stroked along the red lines which covered Jethro’s back. Subsequently he eyed the face of the sleeping man, and a smile played around the corners of his lips.
He remembered the laborious path the other one had had to cover, and Bennett was glad that he had been able to help him with his sober mind. Only this way he had been able to support Jethro, to wipe away his tears and to endure his curses with stoical serenity.
Although the man had left the rehab clinic on his own feet, the firm compression clothes still were a permanent companion in his life, as well as the constant physiotherapy in order to regain his agility.
Bennett listened to the man’s breath, and he enjoyed the silence in the house. They had four weeks they could spend on their own. Kate and Aethel had set off for a trip to Australia in the hope to recover a little bit of her family, even when they were separated by numerous years. In the meantime, he addressed Mrs. Reddington by her first name only. She had decided that things had to be straightened out as long as she was alive.
The old lady had scared the hell out of him, because after Jethro had returned home, she handed out to him a dismissal without notice. Bennett noticed the attached check only then, when his heart had already stopped beating. It was an amount of compensation which enabled him that he would never have to work again.
Aethel hadn’t accepted any objections. She merely had added that a dismissal at such a short notice had to be balanced adequately. Subsequently she had announced that it would be self-evident that Bennett as Jethro’s partner should live with them.
Bennett still adjusted her chair. He brought her tea and drove her to her bridge evenings which she attended again in the meantime, but he felt much quicker as a part of the family than he had ever believed it to be possible.
“I love you,” reached his ears.
Bennett focused on Jethro’s face, and he looked in his blue eyes.
“I love you, too,” he replied softly, and he closed the lips of the man with his own ones.
-The end-
Also By Cat T. Mad
Homoerotic Short Stories
The heading is the program.
Just a Porn includes seven varied, homoerotic short stories that take place in the present days. Unexpected situations bring men together and provide them with one thing first and foremost; their fun.
From a cartoonist who uses a builder as his muse and get caught in the act to a callboy who falls in love with a guest. Beyond a doubt, the reader will expect a lot of sex and a happy ending. Stories full of explicit, in detail described erotic which however doesn’t show a lack of humor, romance and deep meanings.
ISBN: 978-3-947005-57-4
ASIN: B01N6X9BEY
Heroic Dreams
Dominic dropped the pen to his countertop. He was frustrated.
“It simply can’t be true!”
He crumpled the piece of paper up, and he set his sight on the already quite overstuffed wastebasket. Then he threw the paper in this direction. He missed his target, and the unshapely ball landed next to numerous other ones on the dark laminate floor. The man with the reddish brown hair heaved an impatient groan. He reached for his cup of coffee and went on his way to the kitchen. A glance at his watch revealed to him that it was already past midnight. His body demonstrated to him his tiredness, and as a result he gave a loud yawn. He knew that he should better vanish into his bed. Maybe he would be more successful on the following day? He rubbed his eyes, but despite of his exhaustion, he pushed the button for another hot drink which would keep him awake. Dominic braced himself against the countertop. He listened to the sound of the pouring in of the hot coffee and sighed desperately. There were no more than two weeks left, until the publisher should have received the rough draft of the comic, and everything he was able to draw was a load of bullshit which enriched the wastebasket. The story was on his mind, the pictures in front of his eyes, but for any reason whatsoever he obviously wasn’t capable of drawing a single line on the paper at this moment. The fact that it was his profession and that it wasn’t his first comic made him feel even more frustrated.
His gay serial had been a sensation, and now it was up to him to provide for further hot entertainment. His new volume should be about a leader of the Vikings, a guy like a wardrobe with muscles of steel who took everything that he wanted without mercy. Actually it was really something he was into, even though this time he couldn’t manage it. Each one of his drafts didn’t seem to be right. He reached for his filled cup and strolled back into his study. With an accompanied sigh, he sat down on his revolving chair. Subsequently he stared at the white sheet of paper and he began to outline.
“Damned, Bram, why do you make it so difficult for me?” he wondered, while the picture of the dark blond hulk appeared in front of his eyes.
The mere thought which kind of phenomenal, gigantic dick he would bestow on the Viking, made Dominic swiftly lick his lower lip, and then he jammed his tongue between his teeth. A desperate laughter escaped from his throat.
“When I can’t think of anything else but of fucking, I certainly won’t be able to succeed in this!” He cast his pen aside, and his upper body dropped to his desk. Immediately after he had put his forearms in a comfortable position, he rested his head on top of them.
“A nice, big dick. Muscles, as if they were carved out of marble…a proud, passionate facial expression…,” he murmured and fell asleep.
“Oh my God,” he gasped out, when a relentless noise woke him up.
A jackhammer. The hammering seemed to eat its way in each convolution of his brain and it made his eyes spring open with desperation. His head was hurting, as well as his arms he had slept on. A glance at his wrist watch revealed to him that it was 7.30 in the morning.
“Holy shit, you can’t be serious,” he grumbled. With a pinched face, he glared at the open French window. Silently cursing, he struggled to his feet, because the rest of his body also gave evidence that he had spent the night in an awkward position. As soon as he stood at the door, the sun mercilessly smiled in his face and educed a sleep-deprived grumble from him.
“What a bitch,” was the only thing Dominic voiced.
Then he energetically closed the double door. He frowned, when the noise sounded still extremely loud in his ears. “That’s impossible to endure,” he grunted, and he dragged his feet into the kitchen. With a groan, he observed how the coffee was filling his cup, because even in this room the noise of the sledgehammer was clearly perceivable. After his first sip, he slowly went through his apartment. A desperate sound escaped from his lips. “How shall I concentrate on my work that way?” The grueling noise reached each single corner in the rooms. With a pained expression, he sat down on his couch and he emptied his cup of coffee. He hoped that the roadwork would soon be finished. It was one thing that he momentarily wasn’t able to accomplish his tasks, but under these conditions everything was condemned to failure. Snarling, he switched on his audio equipment and he turned up the music at full volume. Subsequently he vanished into the bathroom. Despite of his sound exposure, the noise of the machine was still perceivable in the background. Dominic’s mood, which had already hit bottom, became increasingly worse. He briefly tried to concentrate on the drawings on his desk, but he gave up this attempt within a couple of minutes. He was frustrated, and he began to clean his apartment, although his mood didn’t improve at all.