He closed his eyes and sighed. “If you wanted to reach under there and do some back scratching, I wouldn’t stop you.”
“Give me a year to stop?” I chuckled as I pushed his sweater up and went to work with my nails from side to side.
“Harder,” he said. “Over a little. No, the other way, left, left. Oh, right there.”
“Sensualist,” I accused him.
“Darn right I am. I like having my butt scratched too.” He suddenly sat up straight. “But not right now. Game’s back on.”
I tucked that bit of information into memory and did nothing to stop the prickling that went through me to think of my hands all over Kevin’s taut, hardbody ass.
The second quarter dragged on with nothing much good happening, so I razzed him unmercifully about being an Irish fan and pointed out that Notre Dame wasn’t even close to being one of the top twenty-five teams; he was a real chump to root for them.
“Oh, come on,” Kevin said with the fervor of the true believer. “Our quarterback knows how to throw the ball. Look at that spiral.”
“No way. Navy’s even worse than the Irish are this year. And look at them, the midshipmen are holding their own. Notre Dame must really stink this year for that to happen.”
Kevin tore his eyes from the screen, gave me a look fit to kill, and deliberately flicked a tortilla chip my way. “Asshole.”
“The good nuns wouldn’t be happy to hear you say that.”
I sure was having a lot more fun watching Kevin than watching the gridiron. Here was a different side of him, restraint and professionalism totally discarded and a boyish enthusiasm on display. Nobody at the bank had ever seen him this way, I was certain, and I was more than a little awed that I, unmistakably, brought this out in him. Well, me and Notre Dame football. He looked great, too, and he’d finally—
It finally clicked. “Hey, you’ve shaved.” I reached out and rubbed my palm over his smooth cheek.
He threw me a bedroom-eyes look. “Took you long enough to notice. Yeah, I thought you might like a change. What do you think?”
“I think I’ll throw you down onto the floor and have my way with you right now.”
“Sounds good.”
“Maybe a blowjob?”
“After the game,” he grinned.
From the first time we’d had sex back in Houston, Kevin had assumed easy comfort between us, even before it had existed. Way before it had existed, but we’d developed that over the past weeks for real. Now, I thought it was great that he was acting a little goofy and didn’t feel he had to hide that part of himself. For some reason, the old musical Damn Yankees popped into my head. Some guy who was nuts about his baseball team had met and married his wife during off-season, so she’d had no idea that he was a true fanatic.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Kevin if he had any other secrets he wanted to share with me besides being an ex-Catholic and a Notre Dame nut, but suddenly I realized asking that would imply a certain obligation for me to be as open with him. So I kept my mouth shut. But seeing that Kevin was this rabid of a fan showed me that the weekends we’d gone off together meant even more to him than I’d thought before, because he’d missed those games. He must have really wanted to fuck. Or to get into my mind. Or something else…. I leaned back, smirking at myself. Then again, there was always the DVR.
Right before halftime, the Irish managed a field goal to go ahead by three points, and so all was right with Kevin’s world when we headed for the kitchen to make ourselves some sandwiches. Except…. “Three points,” I pointed out.
Necking for a full five minutes in front of his microwave got me so turned on, as if I expected we would head straight for his bed when I knew there was no way he’d miss the rest of the game. Or maybe because of that: I was beginning to really appreciate the concept of delayed gratification. Before Kevin, I had taken what I could get as quickly and surely as I could, because I never knew if the guy I’d picked up would bolt or provide what I needed. But now…. I got my hands on Kevin’s bare ass—I’d been thinking of it a lot over the past half hour—by loosening his belt, slipping down the back of his jeans, and letting my fingers take over. Spreading them, feeling the elastic give of his butt had my cock taking notice. Kevin too.
He inched his hand between the two of us—not an easy thing to do with how close together we were pressed—and palmed my package. “Hey there.”
I scratched and he squeezed until we parted for air. “You,” Kevin said as he re-buckled his belt, “aren’t getting any until the Papists win.”
“If I left, you’d be sorry.”
“That’s for sure.” He opened the refrigerator. “You want ham or beef?”
He’d bought hoagie rolls and avocados and olives and everything to rival the local deli, enough to feed six of us, and I liked thinking of him ranging up and down the grocery store aisles, trying to pick food to please me. We had a good time piling it on.
In the second half Kevin’s team racked up seventeen more points, and for the minutes that the score was 24 to 7 we celebrated by pretending we were teenagers, going at each other hard and fast as if our parents were bound to walk in on us at any minute. He pushed up my shirt, shoved me back against the arm of the couch, and played vampire on my nipples. Having him draped half on top of me was more than half of the turn-on. I went back to his ears and feasted on his lobes, which turned fire-engine red, and I could tell he liked my nuzzling, my little licks and tugs.
The announcers going crazy penetrated the sex-fog I was entering, and Kevin and I turned back to the TV at the same time. Kevin sat up abruptly. It was the very end of the game, less than two minutes left, but Navy scored a touchdown. Kevin cursed out loud. I sat up too, tucked my shirt back in my pants, shook my head, and got back into the game. By that time I almost cared as much as he did; he pulled me into his world that definitely.
And then Navy scored again when the Irish mishandled the ball, and Kevin about had a heart attack. “Shit! Can you believe that?”
“Sit down, would you? There’s only a minute left.”
Kevin stood there with his hands clenched as he counted down the time, and finally Notre Dame won, 27 to 21. He collapsed next to me like he’d given all his energy to his team.
“Whew, that was close.”
“That team always makes their fans suffer,” I said. The remote was next to me, so I flipped the TV off. The sudden silence in the house was startling. My ears rang a little from the cheering during the wild finish; that big screen TV had a devil of a sound system.
We stayed slouched there together for a minute or two. Then, lazily, Kevin turned his head toward me. “Hey,” he said with a small wattage Kevin-smile, more than a little sheepish too. “Maybe I should have warned you what you were getting into?”
I reached out and rubbed all over the bristles of his short-short hair, like he was a dog that needed petting. “Kevin Robert Bannerman, fan extraordinaire.”
“Thanks for watching that with me. Thanks for coming over today.” Our feet were both up on the coffee table. He moved his right leg closer and tapped my Reeboks with his Nikes. “See, nothing weird happening over here. Everything’s okay.”
I didn’t much like having my hesitation in visiting his house pointed out, but I could move past that. “Depends on what you define as weird.”
He waggled his eyebrows at me. “I’ve got something that might fall into that category, if you’re game for it.”
“What is it?” I pulled my feet off the table, planted them on the floor, and sat up.
“How about if I show you in a couple minutes. You want another beer?”
We’d each already had two during the game. “Nope, I’m good for a while.”
“Anything you need to get from your car?”
“My bag’ll keep.”
“Okay then, how about I give you a tour?”
I couldn’t resist the opening. “Of you or the house?”
He laughed, unfettered, a j
oyous sound that darted straight to the middle of me. “All in good time, don’t you think? We’ve got all weekend.”
Even though he was only leasing, Kevin showed a lot of pride in his house. I might have been constrained by a teacher’s salary and no real desire to do much of anything for my little place, but Kevin had apparently had the money and the vision to get good furniture and even a few pieces of art. He showed me the living room, the only room I knew from arriving for our weekend adventures, the generous hall bathroom, and the two spare bedrooms, decorated as if he’d taken a page from Southern Living.
“This looks great,” I said as we stood in the doorway of a room done in delicate blues and eggshell white. “You really are a gay man, aren’t you?”
He looked proud to hear that. “This was meant to be Channing’s room. I’m hoping to get her to stay overnight sometime with me, some weekend that you and I aren’t busy and I’m not out of town. So far….” He put an arm over my shoulder. “Do you realize that since we met over at the school, we’ve seen each other every weekend except for when I’ve been away?”
I turned into him with my fingertips on his hips. “A whirlwind romance,” I said lightly, and then I kissed him. Seriously, with intent.
“Oh, boy,” he said. Kevin grabbed my hand and pulled me into the hallway. “Come here, I want to show you something.”
The master bedroom was neat, if a bit more sparsely furnished than the rest of the house. The famous king-sized bed, which I’d been enticed with for weeks, was covered in a deep wine-colored comforter with gold accents, but that wasn’t what got my attention. Kevin hauled me over to the side opposite the closet, pointed across the bed, and said, “See what I’ve done for us?”
I caught my breath. On the closet door and on the walls to either side of it were mirrors. Four of them, gleaming, at least eight feet wide in all. Reflected in them now were all of the bed, the curtained window behind us, one grinning dark-haired man, and me.
“For us?” I squeaked.
His arm was around my waist. “I wanted to put them up overhead, so we could, you know, see ourselves more easily. But I figured, since I was leasing, that might not be such a good idea. You, uh, you like it? Too much for you? Not enough? Come on, Tom, tell me.”
I didn’t know what I thought about this…. Oh, yes I did. My body told me I couldn’t wait to hop onto the mattress and see…. Oh, God, yes, see Kevin in his naked glory. See myself the same way, and all the things we’d do together.
I literally growled. “Bastard,” I said, my voice low and throaty, sounding like he did all the time.
“Is that a good bastard or a bad bastard?”
“It’s a bastard bastard,” I told him. As quickly as I could, I grabbed him and pushed him down onto the bed, following him and covering him. I looked down into his face, his face that wasn’t unfamiliar anymore, a face I saw all the time now in my mind’s eye.
“You,” I told him, “are full of surprises.”
“Tell me you aren’t going to be a prude about this.”
I sensuously rubbed against him; it wouldn’t take much to get me all riled up. “Does this feel like I’m a prude to you?”
I watched the light in his eyes the way I’d wanted to—what, a week ago? In the park. I’d forced myself to wait a whole week for this pleasure, and in this minute I didn’t know why I had.
“I can’t wait to see you,” I said.
He rubbed the back of his hand down my cheek. “See me now,” he whispered.
I expected him to roll us over so we could look at our images in the mirrors, but he didn’t. Instead he kissed me, long and hard, threading his fingers in my hair and grabbing my head so I couldn’t leave, but I didn’t want to anyway.
“This isn’t it,” Kevin finally murmured against my lips.
“What?”
“It’s not what I wanted to show you.”
I pulled back, panting a little, and let out a small laugh. “Kevin! What else do you have to surprise me with? An ostrich in the backyard?”
“How about…. No, wait.”
He pushed and I rolled off him, sitting up with one leg tucked under me and the other one dangling off the side of the bed. The wine-red sea of the comforter rolled around us, with the give of the mattress just right. Kevin sat up too, rubbing at his mouth.
“What do you think of porn?” he asked.
“Porn? You mean….”
“As in X-rated DVDs. Do you have anything against them?”
Over the years I had very quietly and carefully collected a few. They were locked in an old brown leather briefcase in the junk closet of my middle bedroom, and I didn’t let myself watch them nearly as often as I wanted. I had them memorized anyway, every move and every come shot. It’d been nearly two years since I’d added one to the case.
I stood up and looked down at him. “Are you telling me you’ve got some porn you want us to watch together? And that’s what’s weird?”
“Yeah, because it’s good porn.” He chuckled. “Unusual, anyway, because most of the time those films aren’t any good except to jack off to. But this one’s got some genuine—”
I hauled him off the bed and shoved him toward the door, in the direction of that big screen TV. “Lead me to it. Right now.”
Kevin looked over his shoulder as we went back down the hallway. “Right now? As in immediately? As in Tom Smith is a porn connoisseur?”
“Shut up. What’ve you got?”
“You haven’t seen Dangerous Liaisons, have you?”
“The one with John Malkovich and Glenn Close?”
“No, the one that stars every gay porn hunk who has ever strutted in your dreams. It won some big award a couple years ago.”
By then we were back in the media room. He grabbed the DVD from a bookshelf, put a hand on my shoulder, and held the cover in front of me. I touched it but didn’t take it from him. It had the expected photos of four stars on the top half, though they were all head shots. It was the bottom half that riveted me. There on a brass bed, on a bare mattress, were two men. One was on his back with his legs splayed, and his arms went around—possessively—the man he was holding on top of him. They were kissing. Really into it from the tilt of their heads and the tension of their arms, from the press of lip to lip. The top’s muscled arms erotically extended past the bottom’s head to slip through the bars of the headboard.
“Like it?” Kevin asked.
“Sure,” I said, and I looked again. Gorgeous men, experienced men, men who knew how to give a pounding and take one, men with ten inch dicks no doubt, but it was how the top was crouched over the man he was kissing and how he was being held that caught me and brought everything else to a standstill. I looked back at Kevin.
“I…. I want to watch this with you,” I said roughly, and already I was half-hard, but that was really only half of what I wanted to say. I want to see us like this. I want to see you holding me this way. In your mirrors, because maybe that would make it real….
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Let’s do it.”
It didn’t take long for the DVD player to accept the disk and shuffle round to the movie. We sat pressed next to one another from shoulder down to knees. The opening sequence began, but it wasn’t any kind of close-up porn shot like most of these movies, only some guy who looked vaguely familiar getting into a limo.
“It starts a little slower than you expect,” Kevin said. “But it has production values like you wouldn’t believe.”
Slow…. “I have an idea. Hold on, pause it.”
We reached for the remote at the same time, his hand over mine, and that was enough to produce that deep-down tug in me: sex, sex, and more sex, coupled with that something more that had plagued me all summer when I’d been moping over leaving Kevin in Houston, over giving him up.
He lunged at me and we were at each other, groping to get a better hold than the tight one we had on each other already, and I was kissing his chin, his eyes, across his forehead, and he w
as muttering, “yeah, good,” and took his turn sucking along my jaw. I drifted backward, falling to the cushion and taking him with me, perfect, perfect, and I lifted one leg over him to keep him there. He was hard against me.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Kevin wheezed, pulling away only enough to talk. “We’ve been fooling around since you got here. Should we forget the flick? Huh? Just head for the bed?” He raised an eyebrow in that way he had, and I loved it, loved being freed of my fear of being here at last. He was teasing, hot, and I was free to watch porn with another live human being. I hadn’t done this in a very long time. Only once, really, Sean and me slipping off to a triple X-rated shop on the interstate, picking one of the three gay tapes they’d had, going to one of their small back rooms.
“No, let’s stay here,” I tried to say, but I only managed an insubstantial whisper. I pushed him off, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, sat up and tried again. “Let’s watch. But….” There was something about Kevin’s house that was doing strange things to me. “Let’s see how long we can last without touching each other.”
Kevin literally did a double take. “What?”
“If it’s too much for you, then—”
“I didn’t say that. What, you mean….” He slid over to his left, so that there was space between us. He looked uncertain, disappointed even. “Watch separately? That sort of destroys the whole idea, doesn’t it? I’ve been looking forward to seeing this with you.”
The static image on the screen was of a beautiful man, but in front of me was a man who was even better. He’d given me the mirrors in his bedroom; I wanted to do something to return the favor. “How long do you think we’ll last if we start this and don’t impose some rules?”
He rolled his eyes. “About five minutes.”
Sean and I hadn’t gone that long. “If we’re lucky. So, let’s see if we can go… say, fifteen minutes without touching each other.”
“And then? Assuming we’re still sane.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Three Greatest Hits Page 95