The Tinder Stories

by Tory Temple

  Chris’s hand moved faster on his cock, and his hips came off the ground, his other hand clenching and releasing the fabric of the blanket as he pictured the muscles flexing in Morgan’s shoulders. The soap had slid down between Morgan’s shoulder blades and all the way down his spine, making a trickle between Morgan’s asscheeks and then over Chris’s cock as he thrust in.

  Close, so close, and Chris let out a whimper before clamping his lips together and arching his neck. Fuck, it felt good, and Chris began to shake. The muscles in his legs stiffened, and precome slid over the top of his fist, mingling with the smell of almonds and creating a heady scent that lingered in his nostrils. Chris gasped in one deep breath and then he was coming, his cock twitching and pulsing in his hand and his come spattering on his T-shirt.

  Chris lay there on the ground in his family’s orchard, long into the night, his eyes closed against the thought of the name he’d groaned.

  “WELL, NOW. That’s a nice-looking shirt.” His father grinned at the dark blue fire department T-shirt Chris had brought him.

  “Your old one was looking kind of faded.” Chris watched as his father walked along the path that skirted the orchard, checking the beehives to ensure they were ready for pollination come next season.

  “I know. Your mother insists on washing it.”

  “Thank God for Mom.”

  John Matthews chuckled and closed another beehive before turning to look at his son. “We all need someone who’ll wash our shirts.”

  “I wash my own shirts.” Chris snorted. “Mom taught me how.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Chris didn’t pretend not to get it. “Dad… come on.” He shifted uncomfortably, surprised it had taken this long, really.

  “Christopher,” his father said gently, and then stopped. “No. I’m sorry. Your mother told me to ask you what was wrong or she wouldn’t make me another cherry pie.” He looked disgruntled and Chris couldn’t help smiling. His father loved cherry pie.

  “Dad. It’s not as easy as just… finding someone to wash my shirts.” Chris let out a slow breath. His mother and father knew Chris’s preference for men over women, but Chris wasn’t sure they really understood what that meant. It wasn’t like he’d ever taken a guy home to meet them, so Chris was pretty confident that his parents didn’t spend a hell of a lot of time contemplating the gay lifestyle and all the complications that went with it.

  John gave Chris a long, measured look. “No,” he said finally, “I don’t guess it is.”

  CHRIS LEFT before the sun came up two days later. His mother came out on the front porch, her hands in her apron pockets and flour already smudged on her cheek.

  Chris started the bike and let it warm up as he came back to the house and stood at the bottom of the steps. “Thanks, Mom.” He smiled up at her. “You know, for not making my room into a sewing room or whatever.”

  She beamed warmly at him and came down the steps, curving her hand around his cheek and caressing it with her thumb. “Call next time,” she chided, not meaning it.

  “I will,” Chris answered, not meaning it either.

  Maribel leaned over and pressed a kiss to Chris’s cheek, smelling of almonds and cherries. “I love you, Chrissy,” she murmured, using the nickname he hadn’t heard in twenty years. “I want your happiness.”

  Chris looked at her, startled when he felt his eyes sting and a lump form in his throat. For a moment, he wanted to throw himself at her and hide his face in her floury apron and feel her stroke his hair. “Yeah,” he finally said, swallowing hard. “I guess we both do.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “IT’S THE fair!” Jack said, as if that made all the sense in the world. “Who doesn’t like the fair?”

  “Me,” Chris said, throwing the rag he’d been using to polish the engine in Jack’s direction. “I don’t like the fair. It’s hot, it’s crowded, I can’t ever see the exhibits because too many people are in my way, and I eat too much crappy food and then go home with acid indigestion.”

  Jack stared at him with a disdainful expression. “What are you, twelve? So don’t eat the crappy food. Drink beer instead. Come on, Chris. We’re all going down tomorrow to watch one of the free concerts and get really drunk. Then we can take the train home.” Jack sounded cheerful about his hangover that was still two days away.

  Chris dropped his eyes to the silver surface of the engine’s bumper. His reflection stared back, and even though his face was distorted like a funhouse mirror, Chris could still see the changes that the last few weeks had made. He’d dropped weight—not a lot, but about eight or nine pounds, and that was enough to make a difference—and it felt sort of foreign to smile or laugh these days.

  His bank account was doing just fine, though, considering all the overtime he’d been working just to avoid being alone for too long. It seemed the only thing he did these days was work. Even riding his bike had lost its once-coveted glow. He was either too tired from working, or somehow it just didn’t appeal to him. Chris wondered how much of that was from the swift disappearance of Morgan Daniels.

  “So who-all’s going?” Chris asked, not really caring but trying to stall for time.

  “Dunno. Whoever wants to. I think Rich is, and Greg from over at Fourteen. Maybe Billy. I asked McBride, but he said he and Shanahan were heading east for a couple of days to visit friends.”

  He really had no good argument against it. “All right,” Chris finally said with a sigh, just as the alarm rang and firemen swarmed out of the station house and into the garage. “I’ll go to the fucking fair. Don’t let me eat the goddamned deep-fried Twinkies like last time.”

  “That’s gross, Matthews,” Jack said. “No wonder you had indigestion.”

  THE MOUTH on his cock and hand on his balls was the sweetest thing Chris had ever felt. Hot and wet and tight and perfect, and the suction was threatening to pull his orgasm out of him long before he was ready. Closing his eyes, Chris mentally ran through the fire engine’s instrument panel in his mind in order to try to stave off what was gearing up to be a pretty spectacular come.

  Morgan wasn’t having any of that, though, and Chris heard him chuckle softly. The gentle vibrations of laughter traveled through Morgan’s mouth and onto the sensitive skin of Chris’s prick, making him twitch without meaning to, and his hands came down to hold fistfuls of sheet. “No,” Chris protested, knowing he was getting close. “Not yet. No.”

  His only response was another low chuckle and increased pressure on the head of his cock. Chris held his breath as his balls were squeezed and massaged, the talented mouth that was wrapped around his dick never slowing in its quest to make him come.

  Another run-through of the instrument panel in his head did nothing to slow down the tight, warm feeling in his cock and balls, and when Morgan began circling Chris’s hole with a dry finger, Chris knew he was done for. He kept his eyes shut tight and just waited, the sheet clutched in his fingers and his whole body tensed.

  All it took was the tip of Morgan’s finger to push inside Chris’s ass and he was coming, his hips jerking up and a groan wrenched from his throat. The sheets were pulled free of the bed, and everything was white behind Chris’s eyelids as he poured down Morgan’s throat.

  As soon as he could breathe, Chris started laughing weakly. The strength of his climax had left him limp and sated, a pleasant, tingly glow still resonating throughout his body. There was a feeling in his chest that Chris couldn’t put any other name to but happiness, and when Morgan crawled up to lie next to him, the warm joy grew stronger.

  Chris turned and cuddled in close, nuzzling Morgan’s neck and breathing him in. “Mmm,” Chris purred, snuggling up to him. “God, I love you.”

  In the next moment, his arms were empty and the sheets cold. Chris sat up, blinking into the darkness of his bedroom, and wondered just how fucking long it would be before he stopped having the same damned dream.

  THE PHONE rang at ten, startling him out of a sound slee
p. Considering he’d finally fallen back to sleep around six, “sound sleep” didn’t mean much.

  Chris answered and grunted something he hoped passed for hello.

  “Why the hell are you always late? We’re in front of the fairgrounds, Sleeping Beauty.”

  He sighed and rolled over to look at the clock, scrubbing a hand over his face and blinking the sleep from his eyes. Damn. “All right,” he yawned. “I’ll meet you guys in an hour. Answer your damn cell if I call you.”

  “Deep-fried Twinkies,” Jack coaxed, and hung up.

  Chris snorted and heaved himself out of bed to shower.

  He ended up taking his bike to the fair, knowing parking would be much easier. It was nice to feel the rumble between his legs again, and he made a promise to himself to try and take her out more. Poor baby was getting neglected.

  Chris bypassed the rows and rows of cars and found a nice little spot near the ticket booth. He stashed his helmet and jacket in a locker before buying his admission, shaking his head at the girl when she chirpily informed him that he could buy a wristband for twenty dollars and get unlimited rides. He was smarter than to go up on those rickety things that looked like they were strung together with rubber bands and toothpicks.

  The crowds weren’t too bad, probably due to the fact it was a Thursday and not a weekend, so Chris was able to move through them more easily than he’d expected. He kept an eye out for Jack and flipped open his phone. The call went unanswered. Chris rolled his eyes and left a voicemail that included a lot of profanity. He jammed his phone back in his pocket and sighed, wondering what the hell he was going to do at the fair by himself.

  He’d almost convinced himself to give Jack and the rest of them a big “screw you” and turn around and go home when one of the large exhibition tents caught his eye. Photography stood out in large red capital letters across the front, and all at once Chris was hit with the unexpected memory of Morgan telling him he should submit one of his pictures. It seemed so long ago that he’d said that to Chris—another lifetime, a different place.

  The reminder was compelling enough to draw Chris closer to the tent, curious to see what kind of pictures had been taken, what snippets of people’s lives were caught forever on film. He still didn’t consider himself any kind of professional photographer, but he knew his own stuff was fairly decent and he’d always enjoyed seeing how someone else would take a picture from different eyes.

  It was a crowded exhibit, and for a while, Chris just wandered the rows of photographs without really trying to get close to them. Every once in a while, a picture with a judge’s ribbon caught his attention and he studied it. Most of the pictures in his digital camera right now were better than some of the ones that had won prizes, and it just went to show that photography—or any type of art, really—was all in the eye of the beholder.

  He worked his way closer to the walls after several minutes, examining the pictures from a close range and alternating between impressed and disdainful. A picture of a forgotten mitten in a rain puddle stopped him for a while, especially when he saw that it had been taken by a fourteen-year-old girl. The judges had liked it too, indicated by the white third-place ribbon hanging next to it. Chris looked at it for a long time, his gaze caught by how the photographer had managed to capture the tiny rain droplets between the sodden wool stitches of the mitten.

  Up one row and down the next, and a flash of red ribbon at the end of the wall drew his attention. Chris looked over at the picture, and then all at once the sound of the murmuring crowd around him faded away. The only noise he could hear was the soft rushing of his own blood in his ears and the indrawn breath he’d taken.

  It was his picture. The one that hung in his locker, the picture he’d taken the night on the beach that he and Morgan had grudgingly admitted to each other that they might be doing a little more than just fucking. The one Chris had told Tucker he had a double print of at home and then hadn’t been able to find.

  The one Morgan had obviously taken from Chris’s house and submitted to the fair.

  It took him another moment to realize that the red second-place ribbon was not the only thing tacked to the wall next to the picture. There was a yellow sticky note under the ribbon, the edge of it stuck beneath the corner of the frame. Chris’s brows drew together when he noticed it, and he stepped forward to get a better look. He recognized the perfect, controlled penmanship immediately.

  Me too was printed in careful lettering in the center of the paper.

  Chris didn’t know how long he stood there, looking at the sticky note and trying to process the words into something that made sense. He thought he might understand what they meant, only because they were in Morgan’s handwriting and also only because it was the sole thing springing to his addled mind at the moment.

  But it couldn’t be that.

  Could it?

  Chris was startled out of his daze by another fair-goer accidentally jostling him on their way past. His cell phone rang at the same moment, so Chris fumbled in his back pocket and managed to get it open. “Yeah.”

  “I told you we’d be in front of the Ferris wheel!” Jack was happy sounding and already buzzed, eleven o’clock in the morning be damned.

  “Yeah, um. I’m… not gonna make it.” Chris reached out and unstuck the note from the wall, holding the precious yellow paper.

  “What!” Jack squawked. “You said you were already here, dumbass!”

  “Yeah,” Chris mumbled for the third time, and dazedly realized he should probably try to say something else. “Sorry. Something came up.”

  He clicked his phone closed on Jack’s outraged curse and stared at the note in his hand. Something had definitely come up.

  MORGAN WOULDN’T be home. It was a weekday; he always taught at a fire station or headquarters on weekdays. Chris didn’t even know why he was standing in front of Morgan’s house. He wouldn’t be home. Chris was sure.

  Except when Chris rang the doorbell, Morgan opened the door.

  Morgan was wearing jeans, so old and faded they were almost white, the fabric worn so thin in areas that it was starting to fray. Chris stared at the dark gray T-shirt Morgan had on, noting the white paint spatters that decorated it, and blurted out the first thing that came to his mind.

  “You said you were going to hire someone to paint.”

  Morgan blinked at Chris and swiped the back of his hand across his cheek, smearing a dot of paint that had landed there and creating a white streak. “Too expensive. And it was just the bathroom. Can do it myself.”

  “I could have helped,” Chris said, trying to reconcile the anger with the insanely giddy feeling that was rising in him. “You know, if you’d called me.”

  A very slight blush stained Morgan’s cheeks. “Yes. You could have.”

  Chris nodded, then lifted up the hand that had the yellow sticky note stuck to his thumb. “So I was at the fair today.”

  Morgan’s voice dropped. “I know.”

  “How?”

  “I called to talk to Rich. He mentioned you guys had said you were going.” Morgan’s eyes burned into him.

  Chris turned his hand to study the note attached to his thumb. “Yeah. It was weird. There was this picture there. In the photography exhibit.”

  Morgan cleared his throat and shifted uncomfortably. “Mm.”

  Chris nodded and kept looking at the paper. “The weird part was that the picture was one I took. And I don’t really remember submitting it. So I’m not sure how that happened.”

  Morgan took a breath. “Chris—”

  “And then,” Chris said, pretending he hadn’t heard him, “this was next to the ribbon.”

  “You won,” Morgan offered with a grin. Then it faded.

  “I don’t care about the ribbon,” Chris said, finally raising his eyes to Morgan’s again. “I care about this.” He held up the note so Morgan could read the writing.

  Morgan nodded once and didn’t drop his gaze, although Chris noted that he did
clasp his hands behind his back. It was a gesture Morgan made when he was nervous, not that Chris had had much reason to see it over the course of their relationship. Morgan Daniels just didn’t get nervous.

  “So, my question is this,” Chris continued. “I want to know if it’s what I think it is. And if it is, then you’re a fucking coward.”

  Morgan’s brows drew together, and Chris watched as he nibbled on a tiny part of his bottom lip. He looked as if he was about to speak, but Chris held up a hand and went on.

  “But,” Chris said and took a step closer. “Better the coward’s way than no way at all.”

  He had time to register a smile starting on Morgan’s face before Chris kissed him, both hands coming up to hold Morgan’s head in place. Morgan sighed a little and wrapped his arms around Chris’s back, drawing Chris closer and kissing him with an eagerness that Chris didn’t even know he’d been aching for.

  Morgan dragged him inside, and Chris managed to shut the door with his foot before Morgan had him pinned against the wall and was biting and sucking up a mark on his neck. “God, I missed you,” Morgan muttered against his skin. “Couldn’t do anything for weeks without thinking of you.”

  Chris closed his eyes and slid his hands around Morgan’s waist and up the back of the man’s T-shirt, seeking and finding the warm, smooth skin that Chris had missed so badly. “You’re such an idiot,” he murmured, his head going back against the wall and his hips rolling forward to meet Morgan’s body.

  Morgan slid his mouth from Chris’s neck and traced a path back up, tongue darting out to lick at Chris’s top lip before he pulled back and studied Chris seriously. “You’re right,” he whispered after a long moment. “I’m a huge fucking idiot.”

  “Just so we’re clear.” Chris grinned, fisting a hand in Morgan’s T-shirt and yanking him close again.