Toy Box: Words

by Words (lit)

  I left, fleeing to my own room, my own bed, to be freshly startled by both myself and the sudden terrible longing I felt for Marco.

  Such emotion, while certainly not outside of my knowledge, had not been part of my experience before. Desire as a concept was a familiarity, desire most manifestly made flesh this way was something else entirely.

  Thinking on this, around this, near this, letting my mind explore this new territory, had occupied me so entirely that I very nearly failed to notice Marco when he entered my room, clad in only a white towel.

  Very nearly failed is still nominally successful, though, and very rapidly I found all of my attention fixed upon Marco.

  “If you cannot speak,” he said, “then you cannot tell me no.” The towel fell to the floor, suddenly superfluous.

  His words continued, melodious and nearly meaningless, as I learned that Marco’s cock rediscovered was even more enticing than it had been upon initial encounter.

  “It also means you can’t ask for what you really want.” Marco stepped closer. “I have to guess.”

  His fingers were feather-light against my face, one set alighting on either side of my temple, hesitant, questioning. “I do not wish to guess the wrong way now.”

  Surprise followed surprise that day, as I leaned forward into the gesture. His palms were strong, a gentle masculine cradle, caressing and controlling all at once.

  “But perhaps I am, for once in my life, guessing right, this time.”

  My head went back, lips going up to meet lips suddenly not speaking, occupied instead with kissing.

  And while kissing itself was not a thing wholly unfamiliar to me, Marco’s kisses were unlike any I’d ever known. Here was heat and pressure and the purest of pure needs.

  Words, words -- when your whole life has been -- is -- words, you would think speech would be the most natural reaction in the world. To tell Marco how I desired him, to thank him for his kisses and beg for still more -- that is what a man of words should have done.

  Yet, as we’ve more than established, my words were failing me. Mute, I could not ask. Struck silent, I’d no way vocal to express myself.

  This did not trouble Marco. Denied oral assurance, he found his comfort in physical response -- the certainty that a gentle push upon the shoulders would bring me to my knees, that letting a velvety cockhead trace across my lips would cause them to open.

  “Yes,” Marco said. His hands were on my head, gentle, just above my ears. “I have guessed properly.”

  It’s hard to say who moved first -- he, with almost inhuman restraint and his customary politeness, or me, astounded by what I was doing. But move we did -- slowly at first. A dream rhythm, more and ever more of his cock pushing into my mouth, my lips sliding further and further down with each pass.

  For the very first time, it struck me how strangely silent we were; while I could, obviously, make no sound, Marco, too, kept silent. We’d reached a place that transcended the need for words. Communication had shifted to a deeper, more intimate platform -- all that could be conveyed by touch alone was.

  It did not take long, then. Fiction is different, you know, than even fantasy realized. Marco’s breathing quickened, deepened, took on a ragged rhythm all its own.

  “Gregory,” he said, each word more precious to me for its rarity. “If you are going to stop, you need to stop now.”

  Instead, I pressed on, pushing forward, sucking harder. The need was so great, so strong -- I could not stop myself.

  Nor could Marco. Gentle fingers hardened to demanding steel, holding my head in place while his thick cock jumped and twitched against my tongue.

  “Swallow me,” Marco murmured and, with that, I did.

  A dozen little kisses followed, cleaning his shiny, softening shaft. It was impossible to stop, to break contact until I absolutely had to.

  Marco smiled. “I hope that gave you pleasure, my friend. That my guess was not too bold.”

  In reply, I bowed further, kissing the silky soft top of one of Marco’s feet, then the other, before rocking back on my heels and looking up at Marco.

  “I see,” he said, a strange new smile on his face. A quick bend, and he’d recovered the discarded towel. “Good night, Gregory.”

  ***

  Our routine altered significantly after that point. Many things were unchanged, of course. Had we casual observers, they could not have been faulted for failing to notice any variance in the passage of our days.

  Marco still brought me gallons of black coffee and handled all of the correspondence. If I expressed the slightest whim, it was fulfilled. A post it note saying, “Must research mushrooms,” one day resulted in an Amazon box of books the next. Pages still disappeared from my desk regularly. I never lacked for sharp pencils.

  Yet it was clear now that Marco was in charge. After rising in the morning, I would go to the writing table. There I would remain, composing all the while, until Marco would appear in the doorway and say, “Come, Gregory.”

  At that point, our routine would begin anew. Each night became a celebration of Marco’s guesses, my compliance, and the eternal silence throughout.

  I began to live for the moments -- those precious seconds -- when I could rattle Marco’s composure. My heart would leap when I heard the throaty sigh triggered by my tongue tracing along a particularly sensitive bit of skin. I loved the almost feline purr my love gave when he discovered that I would, upon command, lick my own seed from his fingers.

  That’s when I learned that those minutes came with a price. You didn’t just stumble upon such bliss. You had to earn it.

  ***

  “The work, Gregory,” Marco said, “is the most important thing.” The day’s output of pages had been particularly meager -- not surprising, considering the sheer amount of time I’d devoted to thinking about Marco. “I am guessing that you do not want this,” and here, he fanned the pitiable few pages I’d produced under my nose, “to become the norm.”

  I shook my head. Precious few books would be written at that pace.

  “Then it is my responsibility to ensure that it doesn’t.” He leaned in the doorway, arms crossed. “You will not leave the table until another page you write. Is that understood?”

  I stared at him, at flat black eyes that clearly meant business. Marco was not smiling.

  I picked up my pencil. What’s one page, after all, when I’d already written thousands? A dozen scrawled sentences -- ten, if I was being wordy -- and the thing was done.

  No sweat.

  No problem.

  Easy as pie.

  Except of course, for the fact that the words wouldn’t come.

  This was ridiculous. There’s nothing easier in the world to write than dialogue -- a few sing-song bits of conversation, and the page would just flow...

  “I’m waiting, Gregory.”

  Still, no words. No words at all. For an eternity, no words. Time itself sat still while I searched for a noun, a verb -- an adjective lost in the wilderness, desperate to modify.

  Hell, I’d have settled for a gerund.

  The silence doubled and redoubled while I sat there, inwardly cursing myself and my stupid, useless story twelve times over.

  Then time, which had stopped, suddenly started to fly. In a nano-second -- strike that, it was a fraction of a nano-second, Marco burst into the room, pulling me out of my chair and over his lap.

  “You are not listening to me, Gregory!” The thin fabric of my khakis did nothing to shield me, to spare my ass from Marco’s flat, hard hand.

  Nor did my pants do anything to conceal my growing arousal, the thickening and swelling of my shaft that increased with every swat.

  It was mortifying: the position I was in, the pleasure I was finding there -- all laid, quite literally, in Marco’s lap.

  “You need to focus on your work, Gregory.” The tone was carefully neutral, now that the spanking had stopped. Marco’s hand still rested on my ass, possessive. “This, you owe to your fans.”<
br />
  A shift of the knees and suddenly I was standing in front of Marco, my achingly hard cock tenting out the front of my pants.

  Marco took no notice, choosing instead to focus his attention on my eyes. “Is that understood?”

  I nodded, feeling the heat rise in my cheeks. It was hard not to feel ashamed -- petty, lazy -- in the face of his determination, of the overt concern for the fans.

  “Good.” Marco tilted his head toward the writing table. “Then back to work.” He smiled, a damnably small smile. “Perhaps if you write two pages now, we shall address your... condition... after.”

  My desk chair had never seemed so hard before -- a seat normally more than sufficiently padded was now as unyielding as granite. The tender surface of my ass protested every bit of contact -- but the words?

  The words were flying. They came fast and furious, as if some door that had been jammed shut in my mind, holding all of the creativity pinned within, had suddenly been flung wide open.

  One page filled, almost instantly, in a giddy burst of euphoria. Word followed word followed word, a hysterical conceptual parade, tumbling out of my mind onto the paper at an incredible rate. The next page went even faster, paragraph piling upon paragraph until a pivotal plot point presented itself and I was reaching for a third piece of paper.

  All the while, Marco stood watching. Watching and smiling.

  Time collapsed, into a stream of words and story and sweat. I’d honestly forgotten that it could be like this, how writing this way was just like playing with a lover -- being swept up into a strong pair of arms and carried along, a sensory experience one both participates in and watches, a mute recorder taking in every detail as the story unfolds itself before you. It was like flying, it was like sex, it was perfection itself...

  And when, somewhere around page eight, Marco went down on his knees and crawled under the table, it got even better.

  ***

  In the morning, Marco was gone.

  It took me a while to notice it, I’m ashamed to say. I was so eager to get back into the story, to let that torrent of words spill over me and through me again, to experience that most delightful divine possession, that I’d practically bounded out of bed at first light.

  My table, as always, was waiting, with half a ream of blank pages and a cup of sharpened pencils there for the taking.

  I took them, and took them hard. Pages flew from my table like startled doves, the pristine white surface doubly defaced, each side covered with line after line of gray script, small and intense.

  It was amazing, pure adrenaline. Writing, when the writing goes well, is a very physical act: the words don’t flow merely from your fingers. They course along your spine, knotting and bunching in acid-tinged bursts, pooling up atop your kidneys, aching to be released.

  Letting them loose makes you grin -- but it also makes you sweat. Exertion, purely mental, takes a very tangible toll: my shirt was drenched through before the morning fog decided to depart for colder climes.

  I shed it, skin clammy with the sudden exposure to the open air.

  That’s when I realized hot coffee would be perfect, just the thing to augment an already superlative morning.

  I wanted, and Marco was not there.

  For a time, I pondered this. It had been a long evening. Marco’s -- ministrations -- had continued until nearly dawn, intensifying as the paragraphs came faster and faster, culminating with the conclusion of a chapter and ball-emptying bliss. He could very well be still abed, sleeping the sleep of, if not the just, certainly the very talented.

  The thought of Marco in bed, bronze body wrapped ‘round with tangled, white sheets, was too enticing to ignore.

  I tried, I promise you. A minute. Maybe two.

  But then it was time to discover where my lover was.

  ***

  His room was empty. The bed was neatly made, and when I checked it with a trembling palm, cold. No trace of warmth lingered, giving proof that Marco had been there.

  The kitchen, then. A faint rumble in my stomach signaled breakfast time’s approach. Perhaps fine delights awaited me in the kitchen: an omelet studded with ham and peppers, paired with pumpernickel toast, a fruit salad with all the colors of the rainbow drenched in citrus.

  With perhaps unseemly haste, I went to the kitchen.

  It was empty. The coffee pot was clearly off. The counters were wiped clean. Last night’s dishes remained in the dishwasher, air drying.

  Something was strange here.

  Marco was not in the living room, nor the library, nor even, to my disappointment, in the shower.

  I returned to my office. Perhaps Marco was searching for me, a strangely silent zephyr, as I was seeking him.

  No. The writing table remained the same, with the chaotic pile of my pages drifting slowly to the floor, a half-dulled cup of pencils standing guard. My chair remained where I’d left it.

  The garage then! I’d not run in a long time, longer than I’d care to admit in a court of law, but I ran now, frantic to discover where Marco had gone. He had to be somewhere, anywhere.

  People don’t just disappear. They leave, perchance, and that was a realization that twisted my stomach upon itself, squeezing an unbelievable volume of bile right up my throat to splash against the back of my teeth. They leave, but they don’t disappear.

  It had been some time since I’d visited the garage, yet it was much as I remembered. My car, an eminently sensible sedan, was parked neatly. Marco’s motorcycle, angled and low and dangerous just to look at, crowded alongside it.

  The garage smelled empty and unused. A fine layer of dust was spread over the hood of my car, the ashen motes tracing around the wiper mounts and ascending the windshield.

  Marco’s bike was colder than cold.

  The front yard, the back. The length of the driveway, covered in crushed gravel, biting into my feet.

  The empty roadway mocked me, stretching to eternity in either direction, with nary a clue to tell me where Marco might be. I strained my eyes, trying to force them ‘round the far corner that led the southern route to town, but to no avail.

  He was not there.

  A cold breeze slid over my shoulders, reminding me that standing barefoot and bare-chested in the roadway was perhaps not the best idea I’d ever had. Heart heavy, I returned to the house.

  ***

  I’d written dozens of books, novels and mysteries and suspense thrillers. You’d think that that would give me insight into what to do at this point.

  You would be wrong.

  An hour, maybe, ninety minutes I paced the floor. If Marco was not here, where was he?

  The house was silent, the utter lack of sound growing heavier by the moment. I’d never heard my house this quiet before.

  Perhaps I’d never listened to it, taking the comforting background noise of a house occupied entirely for granted. Bared now, walls had naught to do but reflect silence back to me, the lack of sound flattening over the floor and pooling at my feet.

  If I were a character in one of my books, I’d know what to do. I’d have psychic powers or magical insight or an address book full of bloodhound breeders with nothing but free time on their hands to call upon. I’d be a retired intelligence operative or so paranoid that I would have wired every corner of my house with cameras to record the goings on. It would be a simple matter of reviewing the tapes, and the mystery would solve itself.

  Plot device after plot device suggested itself, each more unworkable than the last. Concepts that work beautifully in fiction fall apart under reality’s harsh gaze.

  At least that’s what one of my critics said, back when I was still young enough and dumb enough to read reviews.

  The first thing one has to wonder, that review had said, is why none of Gregory Hewitt’s characters have enough brains to call the police!

  The words had stung then.

  Now, however, they had a brilliant bit of beauty all their own.

  ***

  It’s
one thing to conceive of calling the police. It’s another to actually do it.

  Especially when you haven’t spoken in forever.

  I stared at the phone. The number to the local station house was highlighted in the phone book: I’d no idea why. It was something Marco must have done at some point, when he needed law enforcement, but without that 911-level of intensity.

  What would I say?

  My lover is missing, I cannot find him!

  Too dramatic, too much information.

  I wish to report a missing person.