The Flame: A Desire Exchange Novella (1001 Dark Nights)

by Christopher Rice

He kisses her so forcefully her robe slips off her shoulders. She fights the urge to lift her legs off the floor and wrap them around his waist. She almost loses the battle; she’s stroking one of his calves with her right heel, and her hands have turned to claws against the hard ridges of his back.

  “Two hours,” Andrew whispers.

  He opens the bedroom door for her like an attentive valet.

  Still tangled in the sheets, Shane doesn’t wake up as she tiptoes toward her closet.

  11

  ANDREW

  Andrew isn’t sure caffeine will be the best thing for Shane’s sure-to-be frayed nerves, but puttering around the kitchen beats hovering in the bedroom, waiting for him to wake up. Besides, he could use some coffee, too. It’s his reward for managing to get through a quick shower without Shane sneaking out on him. He’s only filled the coffee maker halfway when he hears footsteps on the stairs—pounding footsteps that come so fast it sounds like Shane will be out the front door in another few seconds if Andrew doesn’t act right away.

  In the foyer, he finds Shane struggling into his shirt while he spins in place, surveying the hardwood floor all around him.

  “They’re gone,” Andrew says.

  Shane whirls, wide-eyed. Did he think they’d left him?

  “You’re looking for the footprints, right?” Andrew asks. “She was looking for them too. But obviously they’re not here anymore.”

  Maybe he won’t be in such a rush to leave now that he sees Andrew was waiting for him to wake up.

  Or maybe not.

  When he takes in the sight of Andrew in only loose-fitting pajama bottoms, Shane blushes fiercely and turns his back to him. Then he punches his left arm through a dangling sleeve and starts buttoning up his jeans as he heads for the front door.

  Damn. She was right. He’s totally freaked.

  “Shane…”

  “I’m late,” Shane says.

  “For what?”

  “Work!”

  “Cassidy’ll be back in an hour. Just hang out.”

  “I need to go. I’ve got an open house later.”

  “Open houses are on Sundays.”

  “I said later, didn’t I? Sunday’s later. Also, I’m going to drop in on my doctor and make sure I don’t have a huge brain tumor that’s making me see things.”

  “Quit being ridiculous.”

  “You’re not a doctor.”

  “Shane, if it’s a brain tumor that makes you see giant golden ghosts that give you amazing orgasms, then all three of us have the exact same tumor. And that doesn’t seem very likely, does it?”

  The part where giant gold ghosts gave them all great orgasms doesn’t seem very likely either, but he keeps this to himself. Give Shane an inch of sarcasm and he’ll take a mile, a mile that will have him out the door and out of his grasp.

  Shane stares at him. He’s managed to put himself together now, but it hasn’t improved his mood.

  “Ghosts?” Shane finally says. “Last night was about…ghosts?”

  “Somewhat. I think… I mean, yeah. Sort of.”

  “Well, alrighty then. I guess that explains everything. Anyway, I’m going to work and if I’m not a blithering idiot by the end of the day, I’ll talk to you guys later, after I’ve had about half a bottle of Grey Goose and maybe a Benadryl or two.”

  “Sit down, Shane.”

  “I’m not sitting down, Andrew,” he says, gripping the knob. “Please. I just need to—”

  Shane only manages to open the door a few inches before Andrew’s on him. He throws his weight against Shane’s, forcing him to shut the front door with his chest.

  “Let me go,” Shane says. But he whispers it the way he might whisper Don’t stop or Yeah, right there. That’s the spot. He paws weakly at the doorknob with his right hand, his eyes screwed shut, breathing hard and fast through flaring nostrils. Andrew can feel the gooseflesh his touch sends across Shane’s skin.

  “Jesus, “ Andrew says. “You’re really terrified, aren’t you? She’s right. When was the last time you had sex with someone you actually gave a shit about?”

  “I’m not interested in being a prop to spice up someone’s marriage.”

  “Someone’s marriage? Quit being a dick.”

  “Quit making promises with yours you can’t keep.”

  “What promises?”

  “I can’t, Andrew. I just… I can’t.”

  “You can’t what?”

  “I can’t just put on little shows with Cassidy to get you off. This isn’t going to be a thing with us, okay?”

  “I didn’t get off, remember?”

  “I’m not straight, Andrew. And I can’t pretend to be for you or for her. Or for your viewing pleasure, or whatever last night was.”

  “You don’t know what you are for Cassidy anymore and it’s freaking you the fuck out. That’s what last night was.”

  “Okay. Fine. So I’m a four on the Kinsey scale instead of a five. I admit it. Can I go?”

  “I was there, dude. You’re a three.”

  “Only when you’re sucking on my neck. And I’d say that rounds me back up again.”

  This hoarse whisper—the blend of desire and anger in it—makes Andrew’s balls tense up. “I promised Cassidy I wouldn’t let you leave,” he says in a voice that reminds him of his old football coach. “And I’ve never broken a promise to my wife. Not once.”

  “Just tell her I didn’t feel like hanging out in the kitchen making small talk while we waited for her to come back and say this was all a mistake. A mistake with ghosts. So please, for the love of God, just—”

  He pins Shane by his shoulder and slams his back against the door hard enough to rattle the frame.

  “You little bitch,” Andrew hisses.

  Shane’s blue eyes flare, maybe from pain, or maybe from shock that Andrew’s mouth just closed over his. Andrew feels the shuddering effects of the tremulous thoughts ripping through Shane’s mind. Is this cheating? Should I fight? Can I fight? Kissing Cassidy is like swimming in velvet. Kissing Shane is like rolling the tender sole of his foot gently back and forth over a tennis ball; a delicious, constant tug of war between tension and release.

  “What are you doing?” Shane whispers.

  “She said I had to do whatever I could to keep you here. So this is me, doing what I have to do,” Andrew whispers. He starts to unbutton Shane’s shirt before he realizes he doesn’t have the patience for every single button. A tug on each flap and the thing pops open, buttons flying. Andrew brings his mouth to Shane's before Shane can look down and count how many buttons he just lost.

  Once it feels like he’s tongued the fight out of him, Andrew breaks and takes a deep breath.

  “You really think I’m that easy?” Shane manages between gasps.

  “Sure as hell feels like it,” Andrew says.

  A single, firm tug on Shane’s unbuttoned jeans and Shane’s absurdly hard cock bounces up into the air between them. In his rush to leave, Shane forgot to put on his underwear and now he is fully exposed.

  With one arm braced across his chest, Andrew explores Shane’s smoothness with his other hand, his fingers traveling to places he didn’t touch the night before. When he gently traces the underside of Shane’s hairless balls, Shane lets out a series of stuttering gasps. To hasten his surrender, Andrew sticks two of his fingers in Shane’s lips, then, once they’re slick with spit, he circles Shane’s hole with them, triggering a wave of pleasure that makes Shane’s legs go limp. To keep himself from collapsing, Shane slides an arm around Andrew’s shoulders.

  The smell of Cassidy’s sex still blankets Shane’s body, turning into a new and unnamed cologne Andrew can’t resist. Andrew sinks to one knee, seizes Shane’s cock by the root, runs his tongue down the length of it, tasting Cassidy. Tasting Shane. When he closes his mouth around the head, Shane yelps.

  “You can’t!”

  “I can’t what?” Andrew asks, standing until their lips are almost touching again. But he maintai
ns his grip on Shane’s cock, stroking him slowly and firmly.

  Shane gasps, grits his teeth. “If it happens again… It has to be…”

  “Has to be what, Superboy?”

  “Both of you…always…”

  “Interesting proposition,” Andrew whispers. He finishes each stroke of Shane’s shaft by gently kneading Shane’s balls, then sliding his spit-slick fingers leisurely up and down the man’s taint. Shane chews gently on his lower lip.

  “No…” Shane whispers, but he sounds drunk, on the verge of blacking out from desire.

  “No?”

  “Won’t work…”

  “It’s working now.”

  “You won’t be able to handle the things I want to do to your body.”

  “Ha! I know a challenge when I hear one,” he says.

  Andrew releases Shane, who slides a few inches down the door, gasping, eyes glazed with lust. But there’s regret on his face at being suddenly denied Andrew’s touch. Andrew saunters into the living room, then, once he’s sure he has Shane’s undivided attention, he steps out of his pajama pants, one leg after the other, and tosses them aside.

  “Prove it,” Andrew says.

  Shane is free now. Free to disappear for another week, or two, or three. Free to book himself a ticket on the first flight to China. Free to run, to ignore, to deny any of this ever happened. But the sight of Andrew’s sculpted naked body, fiercely illuminated by the sunlight pouring through the front window, has Shane stumbling across the threshold to the living room, kicking himself out of his shoes and then his puddling jeans, until both men are standing several feet apart, stark naked, studying each other.

  When Shane literally licks his lips, Andrew is surprised by a shiver of pleasure that travels from his balls all the way to his scalp. He’s never offered himself to anyone quite like this. Never offered up his body so willingly, so submissively, and his heart races with as much fear as desire.

  Not like Danny. This isn’t like those times with Danny Sullivan at all. There’s so much more here. So much more power. Danny and I were practically boys. But Shane is a—

  “The minute you say no,” Shane says with a new confidence in his voice. “The minute you resist, I walk out that door.”

  “All right—but no pain,” Andrew says before he can stop himself.

  “Some things only hurt for the first few minutes.”

  “Still, I’m not—”

  “Relax. I won’t fuck you until your wife asks me to.”

  Laid low beneath Shane’s weight and his thrusts. Cassidy watching, directing. Like last night, only different players in different positions. Husband and wife reversed. Oh Jesus. Oh dear God. Could I? What am I doing?

  No man has ever talked to him this way. With Danny, Andrew was always the aggressor, the dominant one. The only thing in play had been their mouths, maybe a finger or two. But the probing, penetrating fingers always belonged to Andrew. Andrew was always the one in control. But now…

  Now Andrew is the one blushing, his breaths stunted, and Shane is the one with the wide, cocky grin on his face. Only once in his life has he felt this same blend of fear and arousal, and it was over a silly dream. When he and Cassidy first started dating, he had a nightmare that he walked in on her with one of his frat brothers, a nightmare so porny and vivid that when he woke from it he was gripping the pillow in jealous anger even as his cock throbbed against the sheets.

  “Are you done whining?” Shane asks him.

  “Are you done running your mouth?”

  “You only get to set one limit today and you just did. Say no, try to stop me from doing anything else, and I’m out the door and you get to explain to Cassidy how you weren’t man enough to finish what you started.”

  “Deal.”

  Shane points toward the sofa. “Sit,” he orders.

  But Andrew doesn’t sit. Instead, Andrew kneels on the sofa cushions, pitches forward and grips the back of the sofa in both hands, sticking his bare ass out into the air behind him. He gives it a little wiggle for good measure. No way is he giving up all the control. Besides, Shane’s probably so hungry for his cock, he won’t be able to keep up the dominant routine for long.

  “Oh, I see,” Shane says, in response to Andrew’s small act of defiance.

  Now he’ll have to flip Andrew over. Now he’ll have to show how much he’s really hungering for Andrew’s dick. And man, he should pull the window shade because if someone comes up the front walk, they’re totally going to be able to see us.

  “Shane.”

  It feels like the pleasure sweeping through him suddenly is trapped inside a shell of panic and riding a tide of incredible, unexpected vulnerability. If the shell cracks and the emotions are set free, he’ll cross over into some new realm of previously unknown bliss. But part of him can’t help but fight it because it feels wrong. Beyond wrong. Beyond forbidden. He didn’t know he had so many nerves down there, didn’t know they could be used against him this way. Against his ego, his aggression, his masculinity. The gasps and moans coming from him sound genderless and desperate. Andrew reaches behind him, grabbing for Shane’s head. But Shane bats his hands away with one swift strike.

  “Remember the rules?”

  “But wait, stop—you c-can’t—”

  “Oh, what? You thought you could take a little control back? Make me repeat my instructions? Make me beg for your cock? Is that it?”

  “Seriously, Shane. You have to sto— You have to…” Lick. Probe. Lick. Bite. Slap.

  “I tell you to sit and instead you wiggle your hard ass at me like a cock tease, after you told me I couldn’t fuck it? Well, this is what you get for that, Mr. Burke.” Mr. Burke is what Cassidy always calls him when she drags him into the bedroom for some naughty, late-afternoon role-play. Hearing it out of Shane’s mouth makes him wonder how many details of their sexual adventures she’s shared with Shane, and how many of those details have fueled Shane’s appetite for him. The thought of them together, discussing his body, discussing the tender, special spots on his skin, makes him dizzy with desire.

  “I can’t be—I mean, you have to st-stop or I…”

  Shane smacks his lips and draws his mouth from Andrew’s ass. “This wasn’t the limit!”

  “Still I…”

  Andrew can’t speak, because even his mind can’t fasten on the words for what Shane is doing. Shane’s mouth, down there. Can’t see. Is it just his mouth? Is it his hand? No. His hands are on my cock, on my balls, so it has to be just his— Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck… His thoughts spill out into frenzied gasps.

  “Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck—”

  “I thought that was your limit,” Shane growls. Then he goes back to work, his flickering tongue fearlessly traveling the sensitive, unexplored crack of Andrew’s ass.

  Just like it traveled Cassidy’s wet, throbbing cunt. The same tongue, the same flickering motions. The same ravenous hunger.

  And the hard shell encasing the pleasure rocketing through him cracks.

  Oh, God. Is this what she feels when I taste her, when I lap at her juices? Is this some sense of the bliss she felt as Shane devoured her lips, her folds, her hard little clit?

  Miraculously, he’s been joined with the waves of pleasure he saw coursing through his wife the night before, all thanks to Shane’s skillful, fearless tongue. This realization unleashes something inside of him. His mouth opens against the back of the sofa. The cry that rips from him is as abandon-filled as the one he let loose in the swimming pool the night before. Only now there are no ghosts, no visions, just Shane’s unleashed appetite, his ravenous worship of Andrew’s body. Every part of Andrew’s body. Shane’s hand strokes Andrew’s cock, suckles Andrew’s balls, and travels places he’s never allowed Cassidy to fully explore.

  Two desires fill Andrew—to take Shane into his arms and hold him as tightly as he can, and to fuck him senseless on the living room floor, as hard as Shane fucked Cassidy the night before. While it feels like they should be competing for
control—these wild desires—they join with each other instead, forming an overwhelming river of desire that leaves him submissive, gasping and exposed; powerless with hunger under Shane’s forbidden, oral assault.

  When Shane rolls him over onto his back, Andrew is rag-doll limp, entirely at the mercy of Shane’s maneuvering grip on his thighs.

  Now he can watch Shane work.

  Cassidy knows how to make him feel like a stud, knows the words and phrases that will set him off, knows how to run her hands over his body like he’s a statue in a museum come to life and she’s the last lustful security guard on duty. But Shane’s combination of aggression and worship is a new experience, and it feels as if every cell in Andrew’s body is realigning itself to accept Shane’s blazing, unexpected gifts.

  Dominating Cassidy and Shane together, forcing them to unleash their conflicted desires for one another, has always been his fantasy. But never did Andrew think Shane—his mouth, his ferocity, his beautiful blue eyes and his slender, hard body—could also allow him to experience the same pleasures that ricochet through Cassidy in the bedroom.

  Shane sucks him with practiced skill, his tongue flickering across the front of his corona in just the right spot. He knows just how to do this, how to do me. Because Cassidy told him. Cassidy shared with him every secret of my skin. He feels bathed in their mutual desire, and this brings him to the edge.

  Shane lets out a sharp, satisfied groan at the taste of Andrew’s fresh flow of arousal.

  “Shane…”

  “Give it to me,” Shane whispers, unwilling to draw his mouth more than an inch or two off Andrew’s cock as he strokes him furiously.

  “Shane…”

  “All of it, Andrew. Every drop.”

  It’s an order, a command. The feverish spasms of pleasure that await Andrew will lay him open, he’s sure of it; Shane must sense this as much as Andrew does. Shane must know Andrew has never come in anyone else’s mouth before, anyone besides Cassidy. Not even the women he was with before they met, or Danny Sulliva—

  Andrew screams. He’d love to believe it was really a yell or a war-whoop or a bellowing cry. But it wasn’t any of those things. It was a scream. His entire body spasms, his legs kicking up on either side of Shane’s head, his back rearing up off the sofa cushions, his abs tensing so hard spikes of pain shoot through him, all while his seed gushes into Shane’s mouth. Amidst this wordless pleasure is a fear, a fear that this is the strongest orgasm he’s ever had in his life, and it’s happening with a man, and does that mean he might be more into guys than he’s ever—and then Shane withdraws the finger he deftly slid inside of Andrew’s hole, releases the pressure he applied to his prostrate at just the right moment, and Andrew starts to laugh.