by Kit Zheng
“I have to,” he replied. He meant to be fond but it came out harsh. “I have work to do.” Trying to make up for his unexpected tone, he said, “When will you be home tonight?”
Tomas sat up, blinked and squinted. He rubbed one hand across his eyes, a boyish gesture so at odds with his macho physique.
“Are you mad about something?”
The question made Vic angry. He couldn’t help himself. “Why the fuck should I be mad?”
“I—” Tomas was struggling to say something, but he didn’t say it, whatever it was, and this irritated Vic even more. Tomas was always like that, so quiet, so wary. Like he didn’t trust Vic to understand. Vic had tried to convince him otherwise, but nothing changed. The man was just so fucking private.
Finally Tomas just said, “I have— I’ll be home after one, probably.”
“Okay.” Vic clenched his teeth against more dangerous things than “Okay.” He left the room without saying goodbye. He had undone all of Tomas’ expert efforts to relax him, and that aggravated him most of all. Slamming the door behind himself, he found he was angry at them both for no reason he would be able to explain to anyone else.
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Chapter Three
Jon Newman was one of Tomas’ many “regulars.”
He was a vice cop, a buddy of Tomas’ boss, and at work, everyone thought he was straight and maybe even a bit of a homophobe. He considered this last to be part of his uniform, the face he put on to be like all the other guys. He suspected at least a couple of the other officers on the force were gay, but there was only one guy he knew to be out, some plainclothes detective in homicide. Everyone else preferred the safe route—
blend in, camouflage, keep it deep in the closet. The smart route.
Jon had Tomas’ pager number written on the back of a business card for a lawncare service, neatly marked with an asterisk on either side but otherwise unremarkable.
They had a standing appointment Fridays, eleven p.m., and Jon usually found himself treated to two hours of spectacular service, but tonight, there was something distant in Tomas.
“You’re a million miles away.” Jon spoke to snap Tomas back to the present.
Verged on anger.
“Sorry, I—”
Tomas stopped abruptly and fiddled with his belt. Jon was annoyed by his sudden uncertainty. For all his naivete, Tomas had never been weak or shy before. It was unflattering on him. “Never mind,” he said sharply. “If you’re not going to be here, just go home and give me my damn money back.”
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Immediate reaction: Tomas stepped forward, yanking his belt free and undoing his jeans. “I’m here.” He wasn’t wearing underwear, left his pants behind on the floor like a snakeskin. Stood there, unconsciously flexing his arms, his shoulders, stretching out his legs. But he was still not there, not engaged. On any other night, he would have been burying his face in Jon’s crotch, or letting Jon taste him.
Jon shook his head, started to stand. “Something’s on your mind, and it’s not me. I don’t—”
Tomas eased down onto his knees and smiled up at Jon. His hands massaged up and down the length of Jon’s jean-clad thighs, squeezing and kneading. Teasing.
“Something is on my mind. I’ve been thinking about it all day.” He leaned forward, mouthed the soft mound of Jon’s cock through his jeans. He smiled and Jon believed for a minute that Tomas was simply tired; he was all there now, eyes on Jon as he lowered himself, mischievous grin when he yanked open Jon’s button fly with his teeth.
That was what Jon had been thinking of all day, a blowjob from a gorgeous guy in the comfort and privacy of his own home, without all the hassle of cruising a club or romancing and dinner. Tomas was amazing at making Jon feel like he was wanted, that their intimacy was genuine. He never felt like just a (pun intended) john. Jon leaned back in his favorite arm chair and squeezed the arms, velvet upholstery yielding under his broad hands. The mouth on his cock was clever—more than clever—brilliant. It drew him close to his climax and kept him there, teetering, until he felt like every part of him was vibrating with the need to come. When he finally did, it was an explosion, a five-star salute that set off fireworks behind his eyelids.
Eyes half-closed, basking in his satisfaction, he watched Tomas fall back on his heels, fist pumping over his cock, breathing too hard. A line of sweat trickled down the hollow of Tomas’ cheek, down the wide curve of his jaw. Jon graciously lent a hand—or a foot, rather—nudging between muscular thighs, curling his toes up against Tomas’
balls. Just as a groan convinced Jon that Tomas was about to come, the blond stripper slumped, gritting his teeth.
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“Fuck,” he said.
Jon frowned, annoyed, if for no other reason than his own pleasure seemed dimmed by Tomas’ inability to get off on it. But he didn’t show it. Instead, he leaned forward, closed his hand around Tomas’ cock and milked it once, stroking from base to tip and squeezing out a dribble of clear liquid that ran down over his fingers.
Impulsively, put his mouth against Tomas’ ear and he said, “Whatever the fuck is bothering you, whatever’s going on in your own time, get rid of it. Forget about it.
Because this is my time, this is the time that you’re bought and paid for—right now, I own you.” And then he opened his hand, Tomas’ tormented cock springing free, wiped his sticky fingers on Tomas’ belly. “So hurry up and come for me.” He couldn’t say what surprised him more—that he said those things, or that Tomas suddenly shuddered and groaned, collapsing against him, twitching and splashing them both with hot, thick come. Tomas looked startled himself, eyes wide for a moment before they scrunched shut, his mouth in a wide ‘O’ of orgasm or surprise or both, it wasn’t clear.
Whatever it was, it gave Jon funny ideas.
* * * *
“I want to tie you up,” Jon said later, after he and Tomas had cooled down and drunk a couple of beers. He’d had enough hustlers to know that being tied up was taboo for a lot of them. You never knew who was going to turn out to be nuts. Jon really said it to get a reaction. Testing his limits. Sure enough, Tomas looked at him warily. Probably all the more so, considering they first met because Newman was threatening him with a prostitution bust. But he didn’t say no, he said, “I don’t think so.”
“Have you done it before?”
Jon had Tomas’ attention now, nervous, wary attention, but he was there at last.
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Most people had at least played around with handcuffs and ribbons, but considered the serious stuff for bondage freaks and weirdos. Jon wondered where Tomas fell.
“Not really,” Tomas said at last.
“Not really?”
Jon suddenly had a vision of it: Tomas bound hand and foot, forced to kneel, face flushed and cock hard at attention. All that muscle and unable to do a thing about his situation. Ashamed. Liking it. Slick boot nudging between his thighs. Jon knew how Tomas got a hard-on for a good leather boot, how Tomas found it vaguely deviant, vaguely embarrassing. He was such a damn Boy Scout.
“Some guy in college handcuffed me to a bed once.”
“You get off on it?”
“It was more for him. He liked it,” Tomas said, not meeting Jon’s eyes. “Anyway, I don’t think—”
But just the memory of it had made Tomas’ cock half-hard. “I think you liked it,” Newman said, reaching out, giving the reddening flesh a squeeze. He stroked until Tomas groaned a little, gritting his teeth. “I want to hear more.”
“He just…he was a cop, came to see me after work and he was still in uniform and I, ah—” Jon rubbed harder, playing with Tomas’ foreskin, reaching behind and teasing his balls. “I got kind of into it… We joked about him arresting me and…” Tomas’ cock twitched in Jon’s hand. Poor, sweet Tommy and his cop fetish. Jon wondered if he should dig up his old beat cop uniform. T
hese days, he didn’t have to wear his blues and mostly that was a good thing, but he missed the attention a uniform instantly received. Tomas once confessed to Jon that he really wanted to be a cop, like his dad, but he had this secret fear that he’d be running around with a hard-on all day and someone would catch him at it. Jon thought it was less of a fear and more of a fantasy, but he never said so.
Tomas had fallen forward, bracing himself against the mattress on his knuckles, breath coming in sharp gasps. His huge cock was swollen, the head almost purple and 18
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adorned with a glistening drop of pre-come; Jon leaned forward, slowly pulled up the foreskin and dipped his tongue under it, lapping at the hot, straining head. “Then what happened?” he coaxed, almost whispering.
“We… ah…we were just goofing,” Tomas gasped.
“Then what happened?” Jon repeated. His thumb rubbed the underside of Tomas’
cock.
“It wasn’t safe,” Tomas protested, “I could have hurt myself. We didn’t know.” But his cock twitched again, and his cheeks were bright red.
Jon sucked Tomas’ cock into his mouth, not deep-throating, just sucking the head and a bit of the shaft, playing with him. It was a tease, a demand and a promise all at once.
“He…he cuffed my hands over my head, through the bedframe…said he was gonna leave me like that, as punishment.” Tomas’ eyes were clenched shut. “I thought he was gone for hours, but later he said it was only half an hour. I thought my roommate was going to find me like that. I wanted to yell but I was scared someone would come in and see me. But he came back and fucked me— Ah, Jesus—” Jon jerked back, dropped his hands, left Tomas thrusting his hips into the empty air, seconds away from orgasm. “Please— Shit—ah…” Tomas’ hands moved toward his cock but Jon grabbed them, startling Tomas into looking at him.
“I don’t want you to come yet,” Jon said. “He fucked you and then what?”
“I dunno,” Tomas said breathlessly. “That was it.”
Jon let out a hiss of breath between his teeth. That wasn’t how he would have ended it. He’d have left Tomas strung up, covered in sweat and cum. Confused at first, as his arms begin to ache; then panicking, that always-even voice finally raising, calling Jon’s name. Maybe someone else would wander in, fuck him raw, share the wealth.
Maybe a lot of someones.
Jon shook his head, a little startled by the fantasy, by its insistence.
He put a hand behind Tomas’ neck and pushed him down. “Suck me off.” 19
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Tomas obliged. He had a sweet, almost girlish mouth, soft and small. There was something inherently pleasurable about pushing his cock into a mouth like that, stretching it wide and taking it up. Jon Newman leaned back against the head of the bed, fantasized about tying Tomas up and fucking his sweet, sweet mouth for hours.
Watching that sweet mouth suck off his buddies, suck off the entire precinct, face red with shame, doing it all for him.
He came harder than he had in weeks, months, recent memory.
He didn’t want this to be all. He wanted more.
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Chapter Four
When Tomas came home, he saw Vic’s car in the driveway but the bedroom was empty. Passing it in the hallway, he did a little dance outside of Vic’s office, a waiting dance. He walked by the door, paused, shifted his weight. Tried to peek through the crack of the barely open door to see if Vic was really there. Held his breath. Decided if Vic was in there, he didn’t want to bother him. Kept going.
He looked at the clock as he passed it in the bedroom, digital red numbers declaring 12:52. Still early. He had to go in to work earlyish tomorrow, private party thing, do another kind of dance. He sniffed himself before stripping his shirt off and stuffing it in the hamper, wrinkling his nose. He still smelled like Jon. Usually, he showered before coming home, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to be with Jon that long. He couldn’t stop worrying about Vic.
It had weighed on him enough that Jon had noticed, and Tomas hated that. Work was work. He let his clients see only what turned them on. But today he’d let things blur, said too much. He let things slip that he hadn’t meant to. That moment when Jon had said— Tomas shook his head. He’d let Jon control their session and that was dangerous in his line of work. A little exciting, maybe, but he couldn’t let it happen again.
And Vic.
Vic had been so upset at lunch. For him to be locked up in the office, now… Vic had 21
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never brought work home before, not since Tomas had known him—he drew a pretty clear line between work and play. So Tomas worried.
Still, it was probably a mistake, not showering. He didn’t like bringing his clients home. Like Vic, he needed to keep a clean line between work and not-work. It helped keep things sane.
Tomas looked at the numbers flip to 12:53, and thought about giving it all up again.
Wondered, if he gave it up, what he’d do, what he could do. His mom would say the possibilities were endless, if she were still around. Tomas still had his degree, criminology, and he could keep going like he originally planned, go back to school and get that Esq. added to his name, become a lawyer. But he wasn’t sure that was what he ever wanted to do. He loved what he did. He just wasn’t sure he should do it forever.
Wasn’t sure he could do it forever. Not if he wanted Vic in his life.
Cam wandered in from somewhere else, tail wagging. He snuffled Tomas’ hands and his crotch and then with a dog equivalent of a shrug, pushed past and started drinking out of the toilet. Tomas laughed, chasing him off. “I know your water dish is full, mister.”
“It is. I just filled it half an hour ago.”
Like the sun had finally emerged from the clouds, Tomas felt a smile sweep warmly through his entire body and emerge across his face. “Hi, Vic,” he said.
“Hey,” Vic said. “Don’t let me interrupt. I just came to get something out of my jacket.”
“Just showering.” Tomas watched Vic search the pockets of his jacket, coming up at last with a dirty scrap of paper. He wanted to go across the room, steal a kiss or three, a crushing embrace. But Vic looked preoccupied, so he just watched. Stared at the dusting of dark hair on Vic’s knuckles, up his arms. Thicker on his chest. Tomas felt horny.
“What kept you out so late?”
“Client,” Tomas said.
Vic looked up. “New guy?”
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“Regular.”
“Mr. Bananas?”
They cracked simultaneous smiles. “No. And he’s stopped with the bananas, these days.”
“What is it now, apples?”
Tomas took a mock swing at Vic. Vic laughed, an honest laugh, and Tomas felt the weird, oppressive weight on him lifting. “It was just Benny’s Pet Cop.” Tomas called him that because Jon was known to bust guys as favors to Benny, the owner of the 11:30
Club. Jon made it easy for Benny to get rid of the competition—or his own dancers if they decided to start up side businesses. Tomas had been lucky to get a warning from Jon regarding his moonlighting, and even luckier to add Jon to his clientele instead.
“Oh, the Hypocrite.” Disgust colored Vic’s voice. Tomas tried not to talk about Jon too much because he knew how Vic felt about him. He didn’t like knowing he worked in the same place as one of Tomas’ clients, for one thing; for another, he didn’t approve of using the law only when it was convenient, or to win favors. Tomas sometimes thought that if it wouldn’t have made his life hell, Vic would have pushed him hard for Benny’s Pet Cop’s real name. “So what did he want? Quickie in the back of someone’s patrol car? Vinyl patrolman’s uniforms?”
Tomas never kept any details from Vic, not if he asked, except for really personal information like names and phone numbers. For a long time, it was even a game for them—foreplay of a sort. Tomas would come home and Vic would pry hi
m for the details of his latest sordid encounter, until they were both so keyed up they’d spend the rest of the night fucking. But all Tomas managed to get out was, “He asked me for…
something.”
There was something injured in the look Vic leveled his way. “Yeah?” The words seemed to stick in his throat. He wasn’t sure why. “He knew it was out of bounds though.”
“To ask? For personal information, you mean? Or… What, he wants to date you, 23
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Tommy?” Vic’s laugh was fake this time, trying to pass off his hurt as a joke.
“No, I mean…” Tomas sighed, looked away from Vic. “He wanted to tie me up.” Another clumsy attempt at laughter. “We all want to put you in restraints lately, huh? Must be a cop thing.”
Tomas didn’t know how to respond to that, to the shadows that loomed behind the joke, so he didn’t. “He asked— Well, I told him about that time with Officer Scalia in college instead. He really got off on it.”
“You really get off on it,” Vic said softly.
Tomas shrugged.
“You remember that time you told me about it, and so I dug out my blues, and—”
“And you didn’t even make it out of the walk-in closet.” Vic laughed, sincerely this time. Tomas grinned. Felt a moment of relief. Wondered if he was forgiven.
“I thought you were gonna spend more time making out with my boots than me.” Tomas’ smile turned sheepish. He was aware of his cock as a rod of heat and need rubbing against his jeans and his thigh. “You wouldn’t want—” He came closer to Vic, slid the flat of his palm over Vic’s tight stomach, cupped the crotch of his trousers.
The smile that lit up Vic’s face was crooked and full of mischief. He held up a hand.
“Hold that thought, Tommy.” Kneeling next to the bed, he yanked out a flat box. The top came off reluctantly and the fabled patrolman’s boots were revealed, freshly polished, black and gleaming. Tomas wondered how long he’d had them stashed under there. Vic ditched his boxers, his shirt, pulled the boots on. Stood up straight, gave Tomas a little salute in his boots and nothing else.