Sweet and Sexy

by Jeff Adams

  I was only supposed to spend forty-five minutes with them, but ended up talking with them for over an hour and some skipped their break time to talk more.

  “That was a great time,” I said when Troy came back into my classroom after he got all his charges to their next session. “I don’t get that much interaction in the freshman class I’m teaching right now. Your kids are really curious and want to know stuff, as opposed to most of mine who just want to get the info they need to pass the test.”

  “I’m impressed by them,” Troy said. “I’ll be sad to see them go next week, they’ve been the best group I’ve had so far. The next one will have a lot to live up to.”

  I slipped my tablet into my backpack, disappointed I had to leave. The temperature outside was still hovering in the low hundreds, despite a brief thunderstorm earlier. Morning rains like that one only made it more sticky and steamy. I was headed to the library for the afternoon to work on my research since most of my evenings were spent with Marcus, which reduced my work time. It was doing the same to his, and we were both okay with that.

  “So I haven’t seen you since you spent that day on the farm,” Troy said, taking a seat on one of the desks in the front row. “How’re things with Marcus?”

  I gave my best impression of a melodramatic swoon, complete with forearm against forehead. “Simply dreamy.” Troy laughed, just as I knew he would. “He’s awesome,” I said in my normal voice. “We’re clicking really well. It’s hell on both of us since we’re not getting as much done in the evenings, but it’s so new we’re trying to spend a lot of time together. And the trip was great. I met his horses, or his parent’s horses anyway.”

  “Horses. Um. Okay. Seriously? Horses?”

  I leaned against the podium at the front of the room as we talked. “Of course, it’s a farm.”

  “Farm doesn’t always mean horses.”

  “In this case it does. We cleaned the barn and…”

  “I’m sorry, you what?”

  “I helped him clean the barn. Then we went to the lake where he fucked my brains out and then we had a nice picnic afterwards. Then he taught me how to ride a horse…”

  “Sure, might as well learn how to ride something besides him.”

  I took the pen out of my pocket and threw it at him, hitting him in the shoulder. “Crude much.” I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, we spent some more time at the lake and packed up for home once it started to get dark.”

  “Well done,” Troy said, standing up. “You may have found a keeper.”

  “I hope so.” I slung my pack over my shoulder. “Alright. Time to hit the library.”

  “Thanks again for talking to them,” he said as we walked down the hall.

  “Anytime. Like I said, I enjoyed it. Happy to do it with your next group, too.”

  “Is that Mr. Holden I see in front of me?”

  “Hey you,” I said, turning as Marcus walked up behind us. “What brings you to my side of campus?”

  “I was at Rose and decided to stop over since it’s actually closer to your building than to go back to mine. You mentioned your class this morning so I thought I’d take a chance you were still here.” We hugged quickly. “And I lucked out.”

  Troy stood by, looking pleased. I think he was as happy that I found a boyfriend as I was. “Good to finally put a face to the name. I’m Troy.”

  “Pleasure,” Marcus said as they shook hands. He looked back at me. “Hopefully we get to hang out sometime.”

  “We could start a new trend,” I offered, “a relationship warming party. Invite all our friends over so they can scrutinize us at the same time.”

  “That’s one way to get introductions done,” Marcus said, “though I don’t think my friends would take any issue with you.”

  “I already like you,” said Troy, “so that’s one down on Ethan’s side.” Troy checked his watch. “Sorry, I gotta run. If you do this shindig, let me know. Happy to help plan it or whatever. Catch you guys later.”

  “See ya, Troy.”

  “Later, man,” I said as he headed down the hall. He raised a hand to wave before he turned the corner at the end of the hall.

  “So do you think we should?” Marcus asked as we walked towards my office where I had to stop before I went on to the library. “Or is that pretentious?”

  “It’s not a terrible idea. It’s hard during the summer. I don’t know about your friends, but a lot of mine aren’t around.”

  He nodded as we arrived at my door. “Good point. There’s no telling what a lot of people are up to until fall semester starts.” He looked around my office as I was shuffling things in and out of my pack. “Damn, man, you get a much better cubicle than I do. More space and taller walls. I can stand up and look over at my neighbor.”

  “It’s not a bad setup. Better than what some of the TAs had when I was an undergrad for sure.” I zipped up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. “So, maybe a party in the fall and for now, we hang out together with friends who are around. Make sure we’re fit for public consumption.”

  Marcus snickered. “You mean that we can do more than just spectacular sex?”

  “Yeah.” I felt my face heat up as we came back into the hall, finding our way towards the building’s lobby. He wasn’t wrong about the sex. There’d been several rounds since the lake and there wasn’t really a combination where we didn’t work great together. “Unless of course we’re planning on demonstrating that to our friends.”

  “Oh my God,” he said, now flat out laughing. “I can think of some friends that would totally love that.”

  “So glad you’ve got those friends, too.” My phone buzzed in my front pocket, letting me know I had a text message. I pulled it out and read a message from Troy and started laughing all over again.

  “What?”

  “Troy says I can’t keep you unless you agree to come to a viewing that includes Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, and Stingray.”

  “I’ve seen some Thunderbirds, and it was cool, so yeah, I’ll watch those. But if we’re talking long ago kid programming, then I want to bring some Arc II and Shazam to the screen.”

  “Shazam was cool, but I preferred Isis. The things she has to say to get her powers to work crack me up.”

  “Oh man, right! Something about zephyr winds. She did not have it easy.”

  The comfortable back and forth between us was great and often made me tingly. It felt so easy and right to be with him. Sure, our nights were mostly spent rolling around on his bed, but when we talked about random stuff, I was in heaven. We walked out of Phifer Hall and headlong into the heat and humidity that was already pretty gross, and it wasn’t noon yet. I didn’t know what it was supposed to be today. I’d given up on watching the weather because I just didn’t want to know.

  “Alright, we need a slumber party with Troy to watch some TV,” I said. “How about we go out tomorrow night? I don’t have to teach tomorrow, so I’ll spend the day on research. We go out, have dinner, maybe go to Cypress Inn and then chill for a while somewhere on The Strip.”

  “I’m in for that. Get ourselves outta the house. There’s a rumor, too, that we’re gonna get some rain tomorrow that will finally break this heat wave.”

  “Maybe we’ll add a rain dance to tomorrow’s agenda to encourage that,” I said as I started jumping around and raising my arms to the sky.

  “I’m not sure the rain gods are ready for that,” he said as he grabbed on to my shoulders to settle me down.

  “Buzz kill,” I said, sounding disappointed.

  “Or just not wanting you to hurt yourself, or others.” He gave me a quick kiss, which made my heart leap because he just kissed me outside in full view of whoever was around. That’s not necessarily a safe thing to do in Alabama, even in the middle of campus where things were pretty progressive.

  I raised a questioning eyebrow at him and he just smirked. I think he knew my brain had taken us to the nearest place to make out.

  “Get on to the libr
ary, goofy boy.” We crossed University Boulevard and he headed towards the business building while I went on to the library. “I’ll see you around eight.”

  “Later,” I said as we split off.

  Walking to the library I texted Troy to tell him that Marcus was down with watching some TV and that we needed to set that up as soon as possible.

  * * * *

  Cypress Inn was my favorite place in town to eat and it was nice to be there with someone else, especially Marcus. I ate there by myself sometimes because I needed the grilled chicken with white barbecue sauce. Despite the heat, we dressed up and I thought we looked darned cute together in khakis and polos—his was blue and mine was grey and white. We were two preppy looking guys out for a night of good food, talk and, after dinner, catching some of the Braves game at a bar on the Strip.

  We had beautiful riverside seats with the sun mostly obscured by clouds off to the west. There was talk of storms coming, and the clouds made me think it might be true.

  “I can’t believe I’ve never been here,” Marcus said. “I always thought it was too expensive.”

  “Well, it’s not something you’d want to pay for every night, but it’s not a budget breaker.”

  The candle on the table added nice ambience to the cozily lit dining room, which was only a quarter full. The flickering light made Marcus’ green eyes sparkle in a way I hadn’t seen before. I made a mental note to buy candles because I wanted to see his eyes like that more often.

  “So what do you want to do once you finish?” Marcus asked as our food arrived.

  “The more I teach this summer, the more I want to integrate some teaching into what I do. I want to get into a news gathering organization and try to improve ethics hands on, but teaching the next generation is appealing. What about you?”

  Marcus crunched on his catfish before answering. “Definitely teaching, and maybe some consulting. I’d like to help people starting their own businesses so they can get some best practices in place. That could be teaching continuing ed courses, and maybe university level classes, too.”

  “Cool,” I said, finishing up the prep on my baked potato before tearing into the chicken. I decided to ask a question that’d been on my mind over the past few days. “Are we crazy trying to date while we’re trying to finish our degrees?”

  “Maybe. It might be easier because we’re both doing the same thing so we understand what’s going on, or it’ll be horrible because we’re both going to be so busy we never actually see each other.”

  I nodded. “That’s the same conclusion I had.”

  He was about to take a bite of fish but stopped, holding the fork in midair. “You’re not looking for a reason to end this are you?” He sounded nervous.

  “No. No.” I shook my head vigorously. “I just want to be realistic, too.”

  “As the business guy, shouldn’t I be the one looking at this in realistic terms?” He finally took the bite of fish.

  “How do you look at it? I love the romance, this dinner, our nights curled up watching movies, being at the farm. We shifted quickly from being in a porn movie to romance.” I lowered my voice. “Even the lake, as hardcore as that really was, it felt so right. I couldn’t have done that with just anyone. I was safe with you.”

  A smile played on his lips. Not a goofy grin, but a gentle, sexy one. “Good. So I think we can easily say fuck realism and charge forward. We both know what our commitments are, and we’ll find time for each other around those. I have no doubt it can work.”

  “Whoa.” I said, my eyes looking beyond him to the lightning arcing across the cloudy sky to the west.

  “What?” he turned to look the direction I was.

  “Crazy lightning in the sky.” I was quiet for a moment as I counted. “But no thunder. It’s still a long way off I guess.” I shoveled some potato in my mouth as Marcus ate his cole slaw. “I’m glad you aren’t trying to be realistic. And as long as we communicate about what’s going on, and I should be good at that since I’m the communications major, we should be fine.”

  “Touché,” he said, raising his wine glass, which I clinked mine against. “Keeping with open communication, my parents will be back on Sunday, do you want to meet them? Maybe not on Sunday, but soon? I enjoyed having you out at the farm, and riding the horses and stuff. It’d be cool if you met them.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. He wanted me to meet his parents. “Sure,” I said before I could think about it anymore. “I suppose that means we can’t fuck around in the lake anymore.”

  “It’ll just have to be quieter. Remember how I told you I’d had boys out to the lake. It’s doable, but we’d have to be a lot quieter to make sure they didn’t hear us in the house.”

  “You’ve brought boyfriends home?”

  “Yeah. Mom and Dad are cool.”

  “Mine’ll be down in the fall for a football game or two, be a great time for you to meet them. We always go to dinner here and you could join us.” I flinched as I saw another major streak of lightning flash behind Marcus.

  “More lightning?”

  I nodded. “Sorry. I’m not a fan of big storms.” I took a breath to calm myself. “I don’t go to the games with them, but we do stuff before and after so it’d be awesome to have you along.”

  “Yes! Someone else not into football. Cool.”

  “Yeah, it’s boring. I don’t mind baseball though because at least the guys are in tight uniforms and you don’t have to pay a lot of attention to it. I like hockey, too, for the speed and the occasional brawl.”

  “You know there’s a team here, right?”

  “Totally. I hit a few games a season.”

  “Sounds like another date opportunity.”

  Marcus grimaced just after he said that.

  “What?” Now I looked behind me and saw what he did. On the TV over the bar, one of the local weather guys was pointing out the huge line of thunderstorms on the ominous radar map behind him. According to the details at the bottom of the screen, tornado watch was up for most of the area, and a thunderstorm warning was issued for the county next to us. I turned back to Marcus. “No wonder the lightning’s so intense.”

  As we finished the last bits of our meal, our server dropped by to see if we wanted anything else.

  “Gotta do the peanut butter pie,” I said. “It’s pretty much the best thing ever.”

  “Okay then,” Marcus said. “Sounds like it’s two servings of pie. I’d like a cup of coffee, too.”

  “Coffee here, too, please.”

  The server went off with our dishes and our order as the sky lit up again.

  “You gonna be okay?” Marcus asked, no doubt seeing a bit of fear in my eyes.

  “Yeah.” I paused to take a calming breath. “I’ve heard stories, and seen the pictures and video, of the big tornado that came through a few years ago. Troy was an undergrad at the time and said it was the most terrifying day of his life. While I didn’t go through that, the weather makes me jumpy anytime that guy shows up with warnings.”

  “It was really bad,” Marcus said. “I’d been through a lot of storms growing up here, but that day was unlike anything I’d experienced.” He laid his hand over mine. “You want to get dessert to go and just go back to my place? I’m good either way.”

  I felt like a wuss, but I wasn’t going to deny I’d rather be home. “Let’s do dessert here and then back to your place. It’s not even raining yet. If it blows over quick, we can go out and catch some of the game like we’d planned.”

  “Works for me. We can even start watching the game at my place, have a beer, and figure the rest out later.”

  Marcus was awesome.

  The pie and coffee arrived and I had to restrain from burying my face in it. There seemed to be more peanut butter filling than usual, plus a generous helping of whipped cream.

  “You’re practically drooling,” he said, barely containing a chuckle.

  “Take a bite and you’ll see why.”

&nbs
p; He took a moment to study the slice, poking it with the fork as if trying to find the perfect bite. Then he stabbed the tip and got a good mix of crust, filling and cream on his fork. He held the utensil under his nose and I heard him inhale.

  “Smells great,” he said. He lowered the fork to his mouth and his tongue darted out, lapping up some of the filling. Pie tasting had never been so hot. He paused and then took the whole thing into his mouth. “You weren’t kidding. This is awesome.” He immediately took another bite.

  I wanted to be the pie. Or maybe I wanted to eat pie off him. Maybe he needed to eat it off me. I didn’t usually consider food this way, but the way he approached that bite was smokin’ hot.

  “What?” he asked, his eyebrow raised.

  Crap. I was staring.

  “Sorry,” I took a couple bites of my own just to catch up and sighed because it tasted so good. I decided to come clean. “I was having pretty naughty thoughts about you and the pie.”

  He looked at me for a moment and then stabbed another bite that was bigger than his first. “So,” he said in a low, sexy voice. “What exactly should I do with this pie?” His leg brushed against mine.

  I swallowed hard. My cock tented in my pants, which would make leaving the restaurant potentially difficult. “Well, you see, I haven’t decided if I should be licking it off you, or vice versa.”

  He put the pie into his mouth and then slowly removed the fork. “Maybe we should do both.”

  “How is everything, gentlemen?” the server asked, sneaking up on us. “More coffee?”

  “I think we’re good,” Marcus said, sounding completely unfazed. “Is it possible to get a whole pie to go?” I nearly choked, which wasn’t on a piece of creamy pie. What was he thinking? “And then the check so we can get outta here before the storm comes.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll be right back with that.” The server retreated to the kitchen.

  “I like this mischievous streak you seem to have,” I said. I tried to be sexy with the bite I was taking but I wasn’t sure I was successful, although Marcus watched me intently and the sexy smile never left his face.

  We stopped talking, watching each other carefully as we finished our pie. We never got too overt since there were other people around, but it was incredibly sensual. My cock only got harder. I had no doubt Marcus’ was, too. It was going to be tricky leaving here without it being crazy obvious.