by J. M. Snyder
Well, it works, he admitted. Now if he can just stay right there throughout the entire 10K, I might manage to stay in for the whole race.
The only time Chad vanished from view was when he turned the corner onto Josh’s street. There was a good block and a half between them, but Josh hurried to close the distance and get Chad back in his sights again. But when he took the curve, the bike was nowhere to be seen. Both it and its rider were gone.
Josh slowed but didn’t stop. He resisted the urge to look at his watch and see how well he was doing. He still had another two long blocks to go, then he’d reach the parking lot for his apartment complex. The run back seemed shorter than the run heading to Chad’s, but that might’ve been his imagination. Still, he knew when he hit the parking lot he’d have put four and a quarter miles behind him and broken through the mental block that would’ve kept him circling Bryan Park indefinitely.
But what happened to Chad?
He learned soon enough. Before he cleared one block, he heard the faint clink of a bicycle chain as Chad zoomed up behind him. “Four miles!” he cried, coming close enough to clap Josh on the back. “You’re fucking awesome, man.”
“I will be soon,” Josh grunted. With the end in sight, he felt a huge grin spread across his face and he glanced at Chad to make sure his innuendo hit home. From the sparkle he saw in Chad’s eye, he knew Chad hadn’t missed it. “As soon…as…we get there.”
That last quarter of a mile seemed to stretch out for an eternity. As Chad raced ahead, though, Josh concentrated on that hard, lean body and the promise of having it pressed alongside his. If nothing else, the blood throbbing in his balls goaded him home.
* * * *
Josh found Chad’s bike at the base of the stairs leading up to his apartment, and he found Chad already up the stairs, outside the door to his apartment. Digging the key out of the pocket of his shorts, Josh brandished it as he crossed the short breezeway to his new lover. “Looking for this?”
“Looking for you,” Chad replied. When Josh was close enough, he reached out and wrapped an arm around Josh’s waist. He pulled Josh to him and claimed a sweaty kiss. “You smell like success.”
“I smell, period.” Josh stepped around Chad to unlock the door, but before he even got the key into the lock, his lover leaned against him. The whole of Chad’s body pressed against Josh’s backside. As hot as he was after the run, he had to admit the weight turned him on. Not to mention the hardness at Chad’s crotch he felt pushing between his buttocks…
He unlocked the door and opened it wide, stepping into the apartment and putting some distance between them. “There. We’re home.”
Chad closed the door, then leaned back against it. “Come here, you.”
Half-turning, Josh kicked off his sneakers and grinned. “You want to do it right there against the front door? What will the neighbors think?”
“If they’ve had a good look at that hot bod of yours,” Chad said, “they’ll be all like, damn, that’s one lucky fucker in there. Wish I were him.”
Josh rolled his eyes. “I doubt it. The woman across the hall is eighty if she’s a day.”
“They make Viagra for women, don’t they?” Chad joked.
Shrugging out of his sweaty tank top, Josh tossed it to the floor beside his sneaks. “I can ask her to join us, if you want?”
Chad’s arms eased around his waist, the touch of bare flesh on his naked stomach sticky and warm. He pressed his lips to the hollow of Josh’s throat. “Tough titty. You’re all mine.”
But when Chad started to lead Josh down the hall to the bedroom, Josh protested. “I just changed the sheets. I’m stinky and wet.”
“You’re making me wet,” Chad teased. His hands dipped into Josh’s shorts to cup the bulging front of Josh’s jock strap. “I want you, right this second. Unless all that talk out on the road was just shooting the shit?”
“It was real,” Josh assured him. To prove it, he cupped Chad’s chin in both his hands and pulled his lover in for a long, lingering kiss. His tongue delved between Chad’s Chapsticked lips to taste the tartness of the Gatorade Chad preferred while biking, but beneath that was something that belonged to no one else but Chad. A spicy flavor that grabbed Josh by the balls much the same way Chad was doing at the moment, squeezing through his jock strap until he thought he’d burst. Behind his closed eyes, he saw those apple-round ass cheeks pump with the rhythm of the ride and his cock ached with need.
“I want you,” he sighed into Chad’s mouth.
Chad snickered. “Right here?” he asked. They were in the short hallway leading from the front door to the bedroom. On one side of the narrow space was a thin bookcase full of paperbacks Josh had never read. On the opposite wall hung his collage of fatty photos.
“Right now,” Josh agreed.
Chad dropped to his knees, taking Josh’s shorts down with him. Opening his mouth wide, he wrapped his lips around the front of Josh’s jock and gnawed playfully. Josh stepped out of the shorts, and Chad tossed them over his shoulder to join the abandoned tank top and sneakers by the door. Then he hooked his thumbs in the waistband of Josh’s jock strap, one on either side, and pulled it down, too.
Josh’s hard cock stood at attention as he leaned on Chad’s shoulders to step out of the underwear.
“Damn,” Chad said with an appreciative whistle. “How the hell did you run an eight minute mile with that crammed down the front of your pants?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Josh admitted. Then, when Chad’s words hit home, he grinned. “Wait, I got down to eight minutes?”
Chad stood and pushed down his biker shorts, then pulled his T-shirt up over his head. “I timed you from the moment we left my place to the moment you came up the stairs. You shaved four minutes off the time it took you to run out my way.”
“Hell, yeah!” Josh grabbed Chad in a fierce bear hug, his cock poking Chad’s exposed navel. Because Chad’s face was hidden by his shirt, Josh kissed Chad’s rugged chin, then nosed the shirt up a bit to plant the next kiss on Chad’s lips. “So I really am fucking awesome.”
“Not yet,” Chad cautioned, pulling the shirt off completely. “I’m not quite ready just yet.”
When he bent to kick off his shoes, Josh slapped Chad’s ass. “What’s taking you so long? I could’ve been showered by now.”
“And lost this?” Chad tweaked Josh’s dick for emphasis.
A sudden jolt of electric lust raced through him. Suddenly he didn’t want to wait any longer—he couldn’t. Dropping to his knees, he turned Chad around so that sweet ass was right in his face, then he leaned in and dipped his tongue between those tight cheeks. Just as he’d envisioned while running, he held Chad’s buttocks apart and licked the thin, dark hairs down on his way to the tight hole at Chad’s center.
With a gasp, Chad spread his legs and placed his hands against the wall like a suspect in a hold-up. “Christ, yeah,” he moaned as Josh’s tongue tickled the dusky skin puckered around his anus. “Sweet Lord, that feels good.”
“My neighbor can probably hear you,” Josh warned. His breath tickled over Chad’s tender skin a second before he buried his face between Chad’s clenching cheeks.
“Oh God, oh God,” Chad gasped.
Josh kept his nose along the cleft separating Chad’s buttocks and licked down, below the sensitive hole to the hidden skin behind Chad’s balls. Chad arched away from the wall, pressing more of himself into Josh’s face. Josh let his tongue learn the curves of Chad’s ass, the faint hairs, the barely-there freckles, the velvety skin that quivered at his touch. He nipped Chad’s bud-like anus, his fingers massaging intimate designs into Chad’s meaty buttocks, each stroke bringing his thumbs closer to that sweet, pinched hole. When it was slick enough, he eased one thumb in and Chad shuddered above him.
“Yes, yes, yes.”
With playful little love bites, Josh worked his way back up Chad’s crack, his thumb rubbing deeper into Chad’s ass. He stood, trailing kisses over Chad’s tailbone, over the trib
al design tattooed across Chad’s lower back, then up each nub of Chad’s spine. His thumb plucked free and Josh rubbed it up between Chad’s buttocks as if chasing away his own kisses.
Propping his chin on Chad’s shoulder, he whispered, “Be right back.”
“No!” Chad threw back his head and let out an anguished howl. “Fuck me, Josh! Just fuck me!”
Josh slapped Chad’s ass hard enough to hear a satisfying smack! “The lady next door might be old, man, but she ain’t deaf. Keep it down.”
“Where can you possibly be going?” Chad cried.
“Condoms, hello?” Josh ducked into his bedroom—thankfully, he kept his rubbers in the top drawer of his bedside table. Shortly after he met Chad, he’d bought a brand new box, and he was pleased to see it was almost empty. He shook one packet out of the box and unwrapped it with his teeth as he hurried back down the hall. The condom dripped with spermicide and lube as he pulled it out and tossed the wrapper aside. “See?”
Chad glared at him and arched his back, his buttocks clenching. “Next time think of that first.”
“Next time don’t attack me in the hallway.” Quickly Josh rolled the condom onto his cock, squeezing his erection as he did. Pleasure shot through him; the thought of dipping into Chad’s tight ass almost made him come right there.
“I didn’t attack you,” Chad explained. “You’re the one who said not in the bedroom. You didn’t want to mess up your sheets…oh God that feels good!”
Josh positioned himself behind his lover and guided his dick between Chad’s cheeks. His thumb rubbed down the crack in Chad’s ass to find the hole again, and the moment he breached it, Chad’s voice dissolved in a delightful gasp. “Yes, yes!”
“Old lady next door,” Josh reminded him.
“Don’t care,” Chad replied. “Just fuck me already, will you? Yes, yes, yes!”
Josh let his cock dip down and pressed it into Chad’s anus. He felt the muscles tense as he entered his lover; bands of resistance tried to keep him out, but he pushed harder and Chad opened to him. “Yes,” Chad moaned as Josh hugged his lover to him. Their sweat mingled as they found a fast, familiar rhythm, Josh plunging into Chad, Chad thrusting back.
“Yes,” Chad sighed as Josh’s hands rubbed over his belly, one tracing up the hard abs to pluck at a tender nipple, the other catching Chad’s thick cock in a fierce grip. Chad fucked into Josh’s fist, matching his movements with Josh’s. They moved in tandem, at a furious pace. Josh kissed Chad’s shoulder and neck, behind his ear, then along his jaw and cheek, until Chad turned to catch the rest of those kisses on his mouth.
Josh fucked him hard and fast, but anything else Chad might’ve said was lost as their lips met.
* * * *
With the fourth mile behind him, Josh found it was nothing to push himself for five miles, and that became his daily routine. Daily he would run to Chad’s house, where his lover would join him—by bike—and they’d race each other to Byrd Park before circling back and heading for Josh’s place. “I should ride beside you during the 10K,” Chad joked. “You run best when you’re trying to catch me.”
“There is no try,” Josh said. “Do or do not, as the Muppet says. I always get you in the end.”
It was Chad’s idea to download the 10K course map off the internet when he thought Josh needed a change of pace. At first, Josh didn’t think that was a very good idea. “It’s all downtown,” he pointed out. “Cars and bikes everywhere. I’ll get killed.”
“Cars and bikes and pedestrians,” Chad pointed out. “Hello? You have the right of way. Downtown is crawling with traffic, yes, but a lot of it is on foot. What about all the students at VCU? What about everyone out walking their dogs?”
Josh wasn’t so sure, and looking at the route made him nervous. It ran straight down Monument Avenue and looped back, and while it was all residential, early on in the race, he’d have to run a stretch of Broad Street, which was the main thoroughfare through downtown Richmond. Monument was pretty busy, too—it had less street lights, so many locals preferred to take it instead of Broad. Add in the dog walkers and bike riders he’d have to look out for, and Josh didn’t think running the race before the route was officially cordoned off was such a great idea.
Chad thought otherwise. “I’ll be right there with you,” he promised. “We’ll put my bike in the back of your car and drive down to the start. I’ll ride a little ahead and you can follow in my wake. What can possibly go wrong?”
Maybe Josh hadn’t read the map correctly, but as he followed Chad’s directions to the intersection where the race usually started, a feeling of dread began to curl in the pit of his stomach. The streets were familiar to him, and not because of the race. Robbie lived somewhere near here, just off Broad Street, and Josh hadn’t been back in his old neighborhood since the day he’d left that asshole behind.
“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” he muttered, slowing down as he scanned the crowded curb for an empty parking spot. This wasn’t exactly Robbie’s front yard, but it was close enough to make Josh uncomfortable. How long had it been now? Eight months, easily. “I don’t see any spots. I guess we can’t park here.”
Before he could hit the gas and speed away, Chad placed a hand on the parking brake and tugged gently, just enough to get Josh’s attention. “Get out. Do your warm-ups while I drive around. There has to be something nearby.”
“Chad,” Josh started.
Chad tugged the parking brake again, pulling it all the way up this time. “Get out. I’ll park. We didn’t come all the way down here for nothing.”
With an exasperated sigh, Josh complied. As he grabbed a water bottle from the back seat, Chad slid over onto the driver’s side. “Gimme a kiss,” he commanded.
Josh leaned through the open door and did as he was told. The first one was perfunctory, but Chad caught the front of his tank top and held him down for another, longer kiss. “Warm up,” he murmured against Josh’s lips. “I’ll be right back.”
Josh crossed the street to the corner and wondered just where Chad thought he’d find a spot around here at this time of the day. Using the bus stop sign to lean against, he began limbering his legs, stretching each for long seconds he silently counted off. Then he moved to his arms and chest, keeping watch down the road in the direction Chad had disappeared.
He was stretching his hamstrings against the bus stop bench when he heard a randy wolf whistle behind him. Damn bastard managed to find a parking spot after all, Josh thought as he turned.
The grin died on his face when he saw his ex-boyfriend standing there instead of Chad. Robbie looked bloated, bigger than when Josh had seen him last. His T-shirt would’ve easily fit over both Josh and Chad, and the way his baggy shorts hung down off his hips made him look shapeless. Round is a shape, Josh thought, remembering the punch line to an old fat joke he’d heard once too often in the past. Probably from Robbie, come to think of it.
“Josh, damn!” One of Robbie’s hands was thrust down deep into the pocket of his shorts, and Josh could only imagine what those fleshy fingers were fumbling with out of sight. “I never thought I’d say this but man, you look hot.”
“Hey, Robbie.” Josh hesitated a moment, then stuck out a hand to shake like a peace offering.
Robbie took the hand and reeled Josh in for a flabby hug that lingered longer than it should’ve. Josh smelled fetid breath, Lifesavers mints, and grape Kool-Aid. Had Robbie always smelled so sickingly sweet? So childish? And was that actually Robbie’s hand groping his ass?
With some difficulty, Josh extracted himself from Robbie’s grip. “I never thought I’d see you again, man,” Robbie was saying.
Funny, Josh thought, the last thing I remember you telling me was that you never wanted to, ever again. Just before I slammed the door between us and took off.
But he held his tongue. He didn’t want to get into anything here—he didn’t care enough, not any more. Why had he dreaded seeing Robbie again after all this time? The
man meant nothing to him now. He had no power over Josh any longer.
When Robbie tried to step closer, Josh started stretching again, forcing distance between them. Where was Chad? He should take off now, start on down the course, run circles around Robbie before the jerk could try hitting on him, but he didn’t want to leave without Chad knowing where he went. Trying to find something to fill the silence between them—and to take Robbie’s attention off his arms and legs, which his ex-boyfriend eyed as if they were food—Josh asked, “So, how’ve you been?”
Robbie shrugged, his shoulders moving like boulders above meaty arms. “Oh, you know. Jesus, you look good. I bet with a body like that, you can go all night in the sack.”
So much for being civil, Josh thought. “You waiting for the bus or something?”
Josh reached his arms above his head, stretching the biceps, and Robbie’s gaze drifted to his exposed midriff. There was something more than hunger on his face now. Josh thought it might be greed. “Yeah, something,” Robbie said, obviously distracted. “Listen, you want to get together sometime? For old time’s sake?”
He took a step closer, forcing Josh to move back. His heel struck the bus stop sign and he considered dodging around it, putting it between them, but that wouldn’t stop Robbie. The man might’ve been overweight, but he was built like a linebacker; if he wanted to tackle Josh, nothing could’ve stopped him. Josh had a fleeting image of himself crushed to death under all that weight while Robbie rubbed against him, grinding him into the sidewalk in an attempt to get off.
The thought of starting his run came to him again. Even at a slow trot, this fatass wouldn’t be able to catch me, he thought.
Suddenly he heard the familiar click of a bicycle chain behind him and grinned. Thank you, Lord.
Robbie misinterpreted the smile and took another step closer. “You’d like that, yeah? You and me, maybe…I don’t know. Maybe we could start things over again, see where they lead.”
“No,” Josh told him as Chad skidded to a stop beside them. “No offense, Robbie, but—”
Gripping Josh’s arm tight, Chad pulled him over to the bike and leaned down from the seat to cover Josh’s mouth with his. Whatever comeback had been on the tip of Josh’s tongue dissolved beneath Chad’s crushing kiss. So demanding, so insistent—this was a kiss Chad usually saved for the bedroom, but here on the street, where anyone could see, with Robbie watching, it was doubly sweet. Josh tasted Chad in the back of his throat, and felt Chad’s probing tongue all the way down to the tips of his toes. Mine, the kiss proclaimed to the world. This one belongs to me, so back off, fatso. You had your chance and blew it. So back off.