He stuck two fingers in his mouth and wet them, then slid them over the delicate tissue behind David’s balls to the little opening and rubbed the muscle there gently. “Fuck,” David whispered, writhing, and relaxed enough for Zach to slide one finger inside, stroking, searching for that little bump… then, “Fuck!” as Zach nailed it and David arched beneath his hands. He slid his finger out and replaced it with two, stretching him, crooking his fingers to rub the happy gland in rhythm with his mouth and tongue. David was moaning now, his hands hard and tight on Zach’s head, holding him as Zach went as deep as he could without gagging, then back up, sucking all the way. “Zach!” David cried. “Zach—oh, God, Zach, coming…!”
And Zach kept sucking, kept stroking until David’s body bowed in climax, and swallowed as David came against the back of his throat. He didn’t release David until he’d collapsed bonelessly on the patchwork quilt, staring up at Zach through dazed eyes.
“I need to fuck you, David,” Zach said harshly. “Let me, please, God, let me….”
“Drawer,” David gasped, and flailed his hand limply at the nightstand.
Zach staggered to his feet and opened the drawer, finding an unopened box of condoms and a tube of lube; he tore open the box and fumbled for the first little packet. David reached up and pulled at the hem of his T-shirt. “Come on,” he begged. “Come here.”
“I gotta do this my way, David,” Zach said, and pushed away his hand. “Just let me do it my way, okay?”
“What…?” David started to sit up, but Zach rolled him over onto his belly. “What the fuck, Zach?”
“Please, Taff,” Zach begged. “Please just let me….” He unfastened his jeans and rolled the condom on, the latex cool against his heated flesh, then warmed the lube in his hands a moment before sliding his fingers back into David. David tightened against the intrusion. “I’m sorry,” Zach said penitently, kissing the small of his back. “I’m sorry, I know you haven’t done this before but please, Taff, please let me. I need you so fucking bad.”
“Go ahead, do it,” David went up on his knees and buried his face in his arms. “Do it before I chicken out.”
“You won’t chicken out,” Zach said, his stroking fingers gentle and persuasive. “You like this part, right? It won’t be much different.”
“Fucking liar,” David mumbled. “Don’t bullshit me, Zach. Just… oh, fuck, that’s good.”
Zach kept stroking, adding a third finger and stretching the tight passage. When David started that soft moan again, he pulled his fingers free and pressed the head of his cock against him. “I’ll be careful,” he promised, and kissed David’s back again, his shoulder blades and spine and neck, kissing him as he slowly pushed inward. David’s breathing tightened. Zach kept kissing wherever he could reach. “Oh, God, Taff,” he groaned. “You feel so fucking good.”
“Good,” David gritted out between clenched teeth, “’cause you fucking don’t, Zach. What the fuck do you have there, a nuclear warhead?”
Zach laughed. “Sssh,” he crooned. “Sssh, it’ll be okay,” and he slipped his free hand beneath David to curl around his limp cock, tugging gently. David gasped and arched his back, and Zach slid home, his balls pressing against David’s ass, David’s passageway tightening around him. “You okay?”
“Mmph,” David mumbled, and Zach eased back. David’s head snapped up and Zach felt his cock filling between his fingers. “Shit!”
Zach laughed in relief. “Hit the sweet spot, huh?” he said, and eased forward a little, feeling the resistance vanish. “Yes, God, yes,” he hissed, and started to move, rocking his hips to plunge into David’s sweet heat again and again. “God, yes….”
DAVID’S FOREHEAD was slick with sweat where it lay on his arms, despite the fact that Zach was the one doing all the work. The initial push had been awful, burning and painful despite Zach’s careful preparations, but when Zach had started to move, he’d hit David’s gland and it felt way different from when he’d had fingers rubbing it before, deeper, more intense. It felt fucking good, and when it felt good, David had relaxed, and when he’d relaxed, suddenly it hadn’t hurt so much. He drew his knees up and apart and started rocking back against Zach, finding a good angle so that Zach hit that spot again and again. And Zach’s hand on his cock was pulling in the same rhythm, just the way David liked it, and he knew he was going to come again if Zach could keep it up. It felt good. No, more than that—it felt right; even if he’d always been the one to top before, Zach felt so good inside him that he knew he wouldn’t mind even if Zach never let him top again….
But, God, he was going to be sore in the morning.
Zach’s rhythm had sped up, his slick fingers sliding faster and faster on David’s cock, and David felt that tingling in the spine that said he was ready to shoot; but Zach came first, slamming hard into him, and then again, and again, groaning his name over and over again, “Taff—Taff—Taff—” His fingers dug into David’s hip and around David’s cock. “Don’t stop,” David gasped, “don’t you fucking stop, Zach Tyler.”
“Can’t—got to—shit!” Zach’s weight collapsed on top of David, but with his knees spread like that, David was able to keep from getting squashed beneath. To his credit, Zach didn’t let go of David’s cock, but kept jerking him off until David came all over the patchwork quilt and his muscles disintegrated. He lay panting and sated, Zach’s weight like an unwieldy blanket: too heavy, but warm and comforting and familiar.
EXHAUSTED, ZACH lay breathing in the warm, musky scent of David’s sweat, his head resting on David’s shoulder. He’d sucked up a deep bruise at some point that darkened the skin of David’s neck an inch or so from his face; he studied it ruefully, then realized with a shock that he was lying on top of David. “Shit,” he murmured, “I’m sorry, Taff,” and carefully eased himself from David’s body. David murmured sleepily and sighed. Zach lay tight against him in the narrow bed, his arm around David’s waist, his head on David’s shoulder.
He drifted off for a little bit, but not so much that he was disoriented when he woke; he knew just where he was and with who. For a moment it felt good, right—and then reality sunk in and his stomach dropped. What the hell had he been thinking? This wasn’t right. This was so not right that Zach didn’t even have a word for how wrong it was.
Then he thought—why not? Maybe he and David would be able to work it out. Maybe Mike was right: maybe he was selling David short, that maybe the scars, bad as they were, wouldn’t matter to David after all? He looked over at David, lying asleep in the dim glow of the lamp on the nightstand. Maybe David wouldn’t get grossed out by the wreck of Zach’s body. Maybe they had half a chance.
Zach shook his head. Maybe. Maybe. In the meantime, the condom was cold and slimy on his wrung-out dick and he needed to ditch it. He eased out of bed, careful not to wake David, and, tying off the used condom, went over to the garbage can by the desk and dropped it in, refastening his jeans automatically, without even being aware of it.
There was a sketchbook open on the desk, a half-finished drawing of Annie on the page facing. Zach glanced at it, then, out of curiosity, flipped back a few pages. There was a sketch of a dark-haired, vaguely Italian-looking guy, handsome and grinning out at him; as Zach paged through the book he saw a few more pictures of the guy, some against a backdrop of skyscrapers. The absent Jerry, he assumed, and his heart hurt just a little at the evident affection in the drawings. There were a few others he recognized—more of Annie, Maggie, Annabel—and then he turned the page to a charcoal sketch of himself. He swallowed. The other drawings were done carefully, lovingly; this one was rough, almost violent. Was that how he came across to David? The tough biker dude he tried so hard to appear to other people? He didn’t think David saw him that way, but maybe he was wrong. Did David think of him as unfeeling, mean, angry like this picture? No wonder he’d thought Zach didn’t want him….
And then he turned the page again and went cold.
The style of this drawin
g was more like the others; in pencil, detailed and careful. But the Zach in that picture wasn’t anything like the Zach he was—it was a fantasy Zach, whole and beautiful. Yeah, David had paid lip service to the scars on Zach’s neck, but even those were subtle, almost invisible. Zach felt sick. This was the Zach that David wanted, this imaginary, beautiful Zach. This was what David thought he had. Not the ugly, worthless piece of shit that had just fucked him.
“Do you like it?” David’s voice came from behind him—too close behind him. Zach closed the sketchbook with a thump and glanced over his shoulder. David stood there naked, his body still shiny with sweat and his sun-streaked hair standing on end. He gave Zach a sweet, sleepy smile.
“It’s okay,” he said indifferently.
“Oh.” David looked disappointed. Did he think Zach would get all googly over a stupid sketch like that? It wasn’t even real. Then David went on and said, “Why don’t you take your clothes off,” tugging again at the hem of his shirt, “and come back to bed?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Zach said.
There was silence in the room, and then David asked quietly, the hurt plain in his face, “What’s going on, Zach?”
“Nothing. This—this was just a mistake, that’s all. It shouldn’t have happened.” Zach waved his hand. “I shouldn’t have come here. I’m sorry. I gotta go.” He brushed past David and went for the door.
David beat him to it, and slammed his hand on the door just as Zach started to open it. “What. The. Fuck?”
“Don’t start anything, David,” Zach warned.
“Start anything?” David demanded. “You come in here and fuck me and then you’re going to just walk away like nothing happened? You fucking bastard.”
“Yeah,” Zach said icily. “Yeah, that’s me. So back off and I’ll get out of your life.”
“I told you, asshole, that I wasn’t going to be just another one of your fucks,” David snarled, shoving Zach around and back against the door.
“No, you said you weren’t one of my anonymous fucks,” Zach temporized, “and you’re not. I do know your name….”
“You fucking son of a bitch,” David said, and punched him in the face.
Zach stared at him in disbelief, his hand coming up to cup his suddenly bloody nose, then slid down the door to sit on the floor, his eyes wide and shocked. David stood looking down at him, still naked, hands fisted, hurt and rage and frustration in his face. “You son of a bitch,” David repeated, and Zach realized he was crying. “You fucking son of a bitch.”
“I’m sorry,” Zach said, and then he was crying, too, his bloody hands over his face as he sobbed heartbrokenly, weeping for David and himself and for mistakes and stupidity and lost opportunities and might-have-beens. “I’m so damn sorry, Taff, I’m so sorry….”
And then David was on the floor beside him, holding him, and Zach was in his arms and sobbing into his shoulder and bleeding all over him. David rocked him back and forth as he cried. David was crying, too, and that made it even worse, so Zach cried harder. It felt like all the grief and longing and despair he’d felt over the last seven years had suddenly decided to manifest itself. The sobs weren’t just sobs, they were great, wracking things that threatened to tear him apart, and for a moment he wished they would, wished that he would just disintegrate into component atoms and that maybe then the hurt would stop….
But when he ran out of tears and was hanging limply on David’s bare shoulder, wrung out and aching, he was still there, still in one piece, still hurting. David was stroking his hair gently, his other arm tight around Zach’s waist. Zach lifted his head from David’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he rasped, his voice almost gone. “I’m so fucking sorry. I should have never come here, shouldn’t have done this to you, should have never fucking come back from fucking Venezuela. God, I wish I’d died there like I wanted to instead of coming back to fuck up people’s lives.”
“Jesus, Zach, what the hell?” David drew back in shock. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Zach said hurriedly, realizing he’d spoken aloud. “Nothing. I’m just babbling.”
“No, no,” David said. “Do you really feel that way? That you’ve fucked up people’s lives—my life, your parents’ lives, just because you aren’t dead?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re a moron.”
Zach choked out a laugh. “Thanks. You always make me feel so much better.”
“Just telling the truth.” David leaned forward and rested his forehead against Zach’s.
“Look, dweeb, just because you fuck up occasionally—or in your case, constantly—doesn’t mean that people don’t love you or that they wish you were dead. Although it’s not infrequently that people wish you weren’t born, like me just a few minutes ago, asshole. But it doesn’t mean we don’t love you or that our lives were fucked up because something, God or fate or just blessed luck, brought you back to us alive. Fucked up, but alive. So shut the fuck up, apologize for being a dick, and come back to bed.”
Zach raised his head and looked at him wonderingly. “Just like that? Just like that you’re going to forgive me for being a complete soulless bastard?”
“No. But I’m going to give you the chance to earn my forgiveness. Shit. You’re still full of blood. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” David stood and tugged Zach to his feet. “I hit you pretty hard. I’m sorry about that—I hope I didn’t break your nose.”
“You didn’t. And besides, I deserved it.”
“Grovel a little more and I’ll start to believe you mean it,” David said, and fisted Zach’s T-shirt. “Get this off; it’s all gory.”
“I can’t.”
David stopped and drew back. Evenly he said, “You think I’ll put up with you fucking me and then taking off, but that I’ll go all girly at seeing your manly chest?”
“No,” Zach said, pulling his shirt back into place. “It’s just—scars, you know.”
“Yeah. It’s just scars.”
Zach shook his head. “No. You don’t get it.”
“Not so far.” David sighed. “I know you were flogged, Zach, and you have scars on your back. I’ve felt them when I touched you, and for them to be that noticeable, I know they’re bad. But I can deal with it. It breaks my heart that you were hurt like that, but….”
“It’s not the back,” Zach said. “It’s….” Then he realized it wasn’t something he could explain. “Fine. You asked for it.” He reached for the hem of the t-shirt and pulled it over his head.
“FUCK…” DAVID breathed. He’d expected scars, but this… this was unexpected, an ugly mass of scarring that completely covered Zach’s right pectoral muscle. Where the nipple should have been was a palm-sized knot of twisted tissue, purple and red and painful-looking. Other scars radiated out from the center, equally deep and violent, looking like a combination of cuts and burns. David swallowed hard.
“Yeah,” Zach said bitterly. “Esteban kept trying to break me. He beat me, but I kept fighting him. So he whipped me. I kept fighting. He broke my fucking fingers, and wrist, and ribs, but I kept fighting. Then he did this.” He indicated the scarring. “He broke me. I stopped fighting.”
David reached up and touched the knot of scar tissue at the center. “Zach,” he whispered, horrified.
“He used a knife. Dug the nipple out. It’s amazing, the amount of pain a person can tolerate without passing out. I wish I’d passed out. But I didn’t.” Zach’s voice was wooden, as if he were reciting a tale told about someone else. “He said if I kept fighting, he’d do it to my other one, and then my balls, and then my dick. I stopped fighting.”
“Jesus,” David said.
“It got infected; that’s why the scarring is so bad. They did something with cauterizing it or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly on top of things by that point. All I know is that it looks like shit. And that’s not all.” He turned around. His back was a mass of raised welts and slashes, still red and twisted a
nd ugly. Over his shoulder, he said, “That wasn’t a particularly accurate picture you drew, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” David said.
“No. Nobody does. Dick and Jane saw some of this at the hospital, but I make a point of not letting them see anything I can hide.” He turned back around and David saw more scars on his abdomen, leading down beneath the waistband of his jeans. He saw David looking and said, “Yeah, he was pretty… thorough. And besides, every once in a while I’d try to rebel, hoping that maybe I could get him to kill me, but he was too good at what he did. He knew just how far he could go without killing me. I should have expected it; he liked to torture people. So. Seen enough?”
David ignored the harsh tone in his voice, and laid a hand on Zach’s left breast, which was unmarked except a thin surgical scar curving around the bottom of the muscle. “What’s that from?” he asked.
“From when they fixed my ribs. They’d healed wrong, but when I got back to the States they were able to go in and fix them so I could breathe right again.” Zach shrugged. “Eventually I’ll probably have plastic surgery to clean up what can be fixed, but not yet. I’m kind of tired of being cut up, you know? It’s not like these have an expiration date.”
“No,” David said. He leaned forward and laid his lips right where Zach’s right nipple should have been. Zach said roughly, “I don’t have any nerves left there, you know, so it’s not like it’s gonna turn me on or anything.”
“I don’t care,” David replied. He moved his mouth, exploring the scars; they were rough against his lips and tongue and fingers. “Not everything is about sex, Zach.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits Page 14