Plaid Nights Anthology

by Torquere Press LLC

  Miles’ breathing was fast, shallow. My flesh slapped against his with every thrust. Now the scents of musk and lube mingled with those already permeating the air. His ass seemed to welcome me, swallow me up as I went as deep as I could go.

  As his pleasure mounted, he gripped fistfuls of the kilt and moaned, “Yeah, that’s it. Keep doing that.”

  “Does it feel good?” I murmured.

  “Better than I ever dreamed.” He writhed beneath me as I sought to wring every last drop of pleasure for both us from this fuck. Beads of sweat glistened on his back. I just kept on plowing into his butt, sensing that his peak must be nearly as close as mine. I did my best to hold out as the come rose in my balls, using all the mental delaying tactics I knew to keep from coming too soon. This was his first time, after all, and I didn’t want to leave him unsatisfied.

  Some things are inevitable, though, and when Miles called out, “Shit, Gary, I’m gonna come,” nothing could prevent me spilling my load. I shot everything I had into the condom in rapid jets. Beneath me, Miles grunted, the noise tense and desperate. I just had enough presence of mind to pull myself free of his asshole’s clinging grip so he could roll on to his back. I grabbed hold of his shaft, jerking it with short, fast motions. Miles’ eyes were closed and his head lolled back, the cords in his neck visibly tense. When he came, his seed arced into the air before landing on his belly in thick ropes, rather than staining the precious kilt.

  He flung his arms up above his head in an abandoned pose.

  “Okay?” It was the only word I could manage. I felt deliciously wrung out, and even speaking seemed like too much of an effort.

  “Mm-hm,” he replied. “Thanks, Gary.”

  “So your curiosity’s been satisfied?”

  “Oh, yeah. I don’t think I’ve got any doubts now about whether I want to sleep with guys.” He reached over to take my hand in his. “But I might want to double-check in the morning—maybe see what it’s like to be the one doing the fucking, if that’s all right by you?”

  “Oh, it’s very all right.” We cuddled together, still lying on the kilt that had been the catalyst for this incredible experience. And it seemed the old joke was right. Everything beneath that garment was in perfect working order, and I couldn’t wait for another chance to see just what it could do.

  The End

  Off-Kilter

  by Racheline Maltese & Erin McRae

  When Eric attends a Scottish Country Dance class with his friend Amara to help her hook up with her crush-of-the-month, the computer science grad student instead finds himself lusting after their very patient dance instructor, Rob.

  “He has a girlfriend, and you’re here to wingman,” Amara hisses in Eric’s ear.

  Eric would point out that she is being far too intense to make their random appearance at a community Scottish Country Dance class seem as casual as it probably should. But now that he has his own interests to pursue, Eric doesn’t really care. Just because he’s here to support Amara’s fruitless quest to hook up with her crush of the month doesn’t mean he doesn’t get to have some fun, too.

  While the concept had seemed ridiculous when Amara pitched it to him, the dance class premise is at least more interesting than some of Amara’s previous schemes. And that was before he saw the hot guy. Last week, Amara had given Eric the run-down on SCD, including a dubiously accurate digression on how everyone into it is either super conservative or totally queer and kinky.

  This may be Eric’s first try at this sort of thing, but he’s from Buffalo and didn’t necessarily need the primer. A lot of his friends and cousins have done Scottish dance at some point, and he’s familiar with it both as a competitive sport and as a social activity. It’s like Riverdance meets square dancing. Except in kilts. And sometimes also in bars. And, for tonight, in a rather musty church basement. He really hopes his object of desire is on the queer and kinky side of the supposed folk dancing culture divide.

  “The hot dude does not have a girlfriend,” Eric says to Amara, crouching down to tie his sneakers in lieu of any proper shoes for the occasion. His fingers are clumsy as he stares at the appallingly attractive man standing by the stereo. He is in fact wearing a kilt, which should be absurd, but with calves like that, Eric can’t imagine protesting.

  “She’s standing right next to him,” Amara says as Eric stands up. “Also,” she says, narrowing her eyes judgmentally. “She’s half his age. And he is twice your age.”

  “Yay, you can do math,” Eric snarks. “And I don’t think she’s his girlfriend.”

  Amara smacks him on the arm. “They came here together, I saw them get out of the same car, and you’re supposed to be helping me with Elizabeth.”

  “Elizabeth is right over there. Talking to her using complete sentences and limited stammering might be something you want to try.”

  Amara frowns at him. Eric’s been friends with her since they bonded way back in undergrad over being the outliers in their computer science program—Amara, one of the only girls; Eric, one of the only gay dudes. Out gay dudes, at least. Now they’re both grad students and housemates, which entitles Eric to ringside seats to all of Amara’s life choices. The crush on Elizabeth—the poli sci major with blue streaks in her black hair—is not one of the worst ones Amara’s ever had. Eric actually likes her, and she’s never passed out on any surface he was trying to use. He’s just seen no evidence whatsoever that Elizabeth is remotely interested in Amara.

  “Look,” Eric says to Amara. “You dragged me out here on a Thursday night with the promise of pervs in a church basement and your ongoing desperation. Be grateful I may have just found a reason to continue to participate in your schemes.”

  “Like you had better things to do.”

  Eric rolls his eyes, and lets himself stare for another minute at the guy’s legs and, while he’s at it, the rest of him. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, with reddish-brown hair and some five o’clock shadow that works really, really well on him. He’s wearing just a T-shirt with the kilt, tartan socks, and actual proper Scottish dance shoes laced around his ankles. When the pretty young woman standing next to the guy calls him Dad and, strides to the front of the room with him, Eric wonders if he should feel discouraged. On the one hand, she’s not his girlfriend. On the other hand, an adult daughter is very possibly an indication of straight.

  “Oh my god, he’s the teacher,” Amara says.

  At the same time Eric mutters “Told you she wasn’t his girlfriend.”

  “Oh yes, even better.” She sighs, looking around, presumably, for the ideal spot in the room from which to charm or seduce or whatever her plan is for Elizabeth. “Because that means he’s actually old enough to be your father too.”

  Eric shrugs. He’d be crankier, but he’s been hostile enough about this whole thing that Amara deserves to get a few jabs in. Besides, if all he gets out of this is fantasy material, he’s still ahead of the game.

  When it’s time to start and everyone gathers in a more or less orderly way, Awesomely Hot Teacher Dude introduces himself as Rob, and his daughter introduces herself as Megan. They’re charming together, and apparently have been team-teaching together for years. Eric looks to see if Rob is wearing a wedding ring; he doesn’t seem to be, but then that doesn’t really mean anything.

  As dancers, Rob and Megan are both really talented, not that Eric particularly has the background to judge. They are precise and athletic and joyful in everything they demonstrate with the help of what are clearly some of their regular students, of whom Elizabeth is certainly one.

  The dance they are learning requires partners and Amara is happy to oblige Eric. Everyone seems to change hands constantly amid shifting groups of four, six, eight, and, just to make things difficult, on occasion three. It’s a little overwhelming, and Amara is, Eric decides, the worst. Although, if he’s lucky, at least all of this means he can get his hands on the instructor.

  Eric even thinks he has it all under control until they get to th
e reels. The idea of following an invisible path like a braid made perfect sense when they walked through it, but with actual music Eric turns the wrong way, gets pulled back into place by someone and then smacks into someone else when he gets flustered and tries to apologize. It’s so disastrous, Rob actually has to stop the music and reset everyone so they can try again. A kindly gray-haired woman murmurs to Eric that this happens to everyone when they start out. Somehow, that makes him feel worse.

  “Okay, this isn’t working,” Rob says with a laugh after the third time the set melts down. “Let’s have Shannon switch with Peggy, Pat, why don’t you try it with Michelle, and you,” Rob says pointing at Eric, “are with me.”

  Eric has no idea what to do. On one hand, this is so ideal he almost regrets having not consciously thought of sabotage. On the other hand, he’s a little afraid of looking too enthusiastic and also isn’t sure if he should put on some angst about dancing with a dude, especially when the gender balance in the room is already skewed in a way he’s not sure everyone appreciates.

  “Okay?” Rob asks, snapping Eric out of his vague panic.

  “Sure, but if I step on your feet it’s on you.”

  “I’m the teacher, if you step on anyone’s feet it’s on me.”

  Dancing with Rob is fantastic. It doesn’t really make Eric any better at it, but Rob telling him where to go and when in between calling out instructions to the entire group is pleasant enough to sink into. When he starts to turn the wrong way, again, Rob nudges him into the right spot. When Eric then screws it up even worse, Rob just grabs his waist, picks him up, and puts him into place. It’s absurd. It’s also totally hot, and Eric can’t help but grin. His interest may be totally obvious and wildly inappropriate as they move through reels and quadrilles with varying degrees of disaster, but Rob keeps smiling too. When he leaves his hand on the small of Eric’s back after one dubiously complete dance, Eric dares to hope.

  “What brings you out here tonight?” Rob asks him at break. He hands Eric a conical paper cup of water from the cooler, which Eric takes gratefully, and is even more pleased when he manages to make their fingers brush without actually spilling the water all over either of them. The fact that the question is completely pathetic he’s willing to forgive.

  “My friend dragged me,” Eric says, and then realizes that, though true, that probably sounds ruder than he meant it. “I mean!” he hastens to add, “It was her idea,” he says, tipping his head toward Amara who, he can tell even from his peripheral vision, is totally failing to get Elizabeth’s attention. “And like I know people who do Scottish dance but I never have myself.”

  “I couldn’t tell,” Rob says with a smile. Eric blushes, and drinks some water.

  “So are you enjoying yourself?” Rob asks when Eric can’t come up with anything clever to say, or, in fact, anything to say at all.

  “Yes. Probably more than everyone else I ran into, at least.”

  “You haven’t stepped on anyone’s feet though, have you?” Rob says.

  “No. Thanks to you,” Eric says. They smile at each other, and Eric is about to ask something informative but non-strategic like so does your wife and/or husband dance too? when he’s saved by Amara elbowing—nearly literally—her way into the conversation.

  “This is my friend Amara.” Eric introduces her to Rob with a pointed look she chooses to ignore.

  “The one who dragged you tonight?” Rob asks, with a wink to Eric.

  “Yeah, and I have no regrets over that at all.” Amara’s sarcasm is biting.

  Eric thinks about stepping on Amara’s foot to get her to stop ruining this one possibly good chance to flirt, but she just has ballet slippers on. He doesn’t actually want to hurt her.

  However, with Amara at his shoulder, flirting is clearly out of the question, so he asks Rob what he does when he’s not dancing in a kilt.

  To his surprise and no small delight, Rob’s a software engineer.

  “I’m in grad school for computer science!” Eric exclaims.

  “Really? Where?”

  “RIT.”

  Rob is clearly about to ask him more about that, when Megan starts rounding people up to begin class again. Eric sighs, and shuffles back onto the dance floor.

  “Oh no.” Rob chuckles as he goes, and puts a hand on his shoulder to steer him to the front of the room. “You’re staying with me.”

  ***

  In the parking lot, Amara slumps down in the driver’s seat without even bothering to put her seatbelt on or the keys in the ignition.

  “That was a complete failure,” she says.

  “Maybe for you,” Eric points out.

  “Jerk,” Amara grumbles half-heartedly. “You are the worst wingman. You totally failed to help and you flirted with the teacher the whole time.”

  “At least it was better than crashing into everyone?”

  Amara gives Eric a look as she starts the car.

  “Does this mean we’re coming back next week?” Eric asks hopefully.

  “No. No! We are not coming back next week.”

  ***

  Despite Amara’s insistence that they won’t go back, when Eric gets home, he Googles the dance group’s schedule for the following week. But there’s nothing listed, just a notice about some Highland Games thing going on. He frowns, and taps his laptop.

  Apparently, easily searchable or highly informative websites are not a strength of whoever is organizing this thing. When he finally finds a site that lists an actual location and time for the Games, it also has bagpipe music on autoplay. Eric hits mute on his laptop as quickly as he can.

  That there’s dancing going on at the thing seems clear; whether Rob is going to be there, less so. So Eric takes to Facebook.

  “You Facebook stalked the teacher?” Amara demands as they walk across campus to the building that houses their windowless offices the next day.

  “I didn’t stalk him. His profile is public.”

  “But you’re going to take the info you got from his Facebook profile, that is possibly public only because he is old and does not know how to set that shit to private, and go actually stalk him. In person.”

  “The games are also public. It’s a public event!” Eric insists. “Like, tons of people are going. It actually looks really awesome. And like, people throw telephone poles at stuff!”

  “Okay, whatever they’re throwing, I don’t think they’re telephone poles.”

  “Well they look like it. So are you going to come with me?”

  “Why should I go wingman for you, after your miserable incompetence last night?” Amara asks.

  “The satisfaction of seeing me wash out as thoroughly as you did?” Eric says blandly. “Also, there’s food.”

  Amara sighs. “Fine. But you get to drive this time. Where even is this place?”

  ***

  The Highland Games are held, it turns out, in the middle of nowhere, or, rather, in Mumford, which as far as Eric is concerned is the same thing. Still, it’s a pretty spring day when he and Amara get into his car, and they pull onto 490 with the windows rolled down.

  The first thing Eric notices when he gets out of the car is the bagpipes.

  “Seriously?” Amara asks him, as they walk across the gravel parking lot toward the little cluster of white tents in the middle of a big green meadow, over which dance stages and game fields are spread out.

  “You were the one who thought Scottish Country Dance was a good starting point in the first place,” Eric says, giving her a grin that she rolls her eyes at. “I think the bagpipes come with the territory, and you owe me.”

  “No no no. You owe me.”

  “For what? Abandoning you to your ineptitude while I mooned over our instructor?”

  “Yes.”

  Eric shrugs.

  “Now what?” Amara asks, once they get to the tents.

  There are tons of people: some men and even some women in kilts, some women in white dresses with tartan sashes, and a lot mo
re people in street clothes who are obviously here just to watch the festivities. Amara folds her arms over her chest and gives an amused smirk as Eric spins slowly in a circle trying to figure out which way to go. Facebook can’t help him now, and the entire scheme seems a lot less clear-cut than it had earlier in his head. If he finds Rob, much less gets to talk to him, what is he even going to say?

  Before he can work up a good reply to Amara, or even formulate something resembling a concrete plan, Amara’s mouth falls slightly open and she stares over Eric’s shoulder.

  “What?” Eric asks, starting to spin around to look.

  “Don’t turn around!” Amara whispers sharply at him.

  “What is going on?” Eric asks, freezing with his head half-turned, staring out at a field where, yeah, that’s totally a telephone pole people are trying to throw.

  “She’s here!”

  “Elizabeth?” Eric asks, turning his head the rest of the way around, despite Amara’s protests.

  “No. Megan.”

  “Oh, she looks hot!” Eric exclaims when he sees her. Megan is clearly dancing today, with one of the white dresses on, a blue-and-green tartan draped diagonally across her body and pinned at the waist. She’s fit and graceful and the look totally works for her.

  Amara follows Megan with her eyes until she’s out of sight in the crowd.

  “Day looking up?” Eric says slyly.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Well,” Eric says, looping his arm through Amara’s and strolling in the direction Megan disappeared to in the crowd. “At least now we know what’s next.”

  ***

  They wind up at one of the dance stages where Megan and a cluster of other women, all in white dresses but different colored tartans, are taking their places—along with a group of men, one of whom Eric recognizes immediately.

  Eric and Amara don’t need to say a word to each other. They both sit down cross-legged on the grassy slope that’s serving as something like stadium seating for the audience. As much as Eric wants to watch Rob, he’s suddenly aware that he has absolutely zero explanation as to why he’s here that doesn’t make him sound like a complete creeper or totally sells out Amara. Which is probably not the best way to make a good impression. Meanwhile, arguing for his great passion for a form of dance he’s objectively terrible at, even as a total newbie, is likely to just make him seem like the liar he is.