by Rob Rosen
“Okay, that’s enough,” After said. “Get back to work. Charlie, we’ll continue this later at home.”
No, we wouldn’t, I figured. I’d be in my room, exhausted after jerking off nonstop to thoughts about Cory, who winked at me on his way back into the building. Flynn would pop open a beer, turn on his flat screen in the basement, scratch his nuts, and throw a bone as a result. The words, unspoken, would get lodged in our throats until the next shouting match sent them flying.
Ugly stuff, yeah.
“All right, Charlie, out with it.”
Flynn shuffled into the room, hands tucked in his pockets. While waiting for me to respond, he rocked on his heels. I saw that he’d at least remembered to lose his work boots in the mudroom, though not the sweaty white socks. Even so, I cut him a break.
“Go on,” I said.
A smile attempted to form on Flynn’s tense lips. The best he managed was a smirk. “You’re pissed at me? I’m pissed at you.”
I faced him, my arms folded. “Oh really?”
“Yeah. What was with the doe eyes at the job site? Did you expect to offer it up for Cory right there on the spot?”
“No, the porta-toilet—I’m a rest stop fucker, remember?”
Flynn’s smirk sagged. “Charlie, that dude’s a dog. He can’t keep it in his pants—chicks as well as other dudes. He’s a one-man army of dick. If that’s what you really want, well, you should be aware that it won’t require too much effort. To Cory, you’re just another notch on his belt.”
“I didn’t know you cared,” I said.
I started past him. Flynn caught me and drew me back by my wrist. “Charlie,” he sighed in that grating tone that had grown more fatherly in recent years than that of a husband.
“Maybe what we need to fix this broken thing of ours with is a good old-fashioned threesome,” I answered. “Dust off the cobwebs, shake up the status quo. Something other than bachelors on TV and summer baseball games.”
It happened a few days later. Two handsome, strapping studs pulled into the driveway, Cory in his big, new truck, all shine and torque, Flynn in his older model, which showed a few dings and paint scrapes: the Before parked beside the After.
I gazed out the window, struggling for breath. After their Saturday afternoon baseball game, Flynn had agreed—or at least conceded to—my request that a three way with Cory was exactly what our relationship needed. For three hours and nine innings, I paced our house, resisting the urge to jerk my erect dick and fearing that, with my luck, their weekly game at the ballpark would go into extra innings. It didn’t. Flynn had texted, on our way, and my hands were shaking so badly that it took me three tries to reply, OK.
Flynn stepped out of his truck, clad in his dirty home-white baseball uniform, expensive shades over his eyes, a fresh grass stain across one knee. He carried his smelly old cleats by their shoe-tongues, and had changed into an old pair of sneakers that reminded me of how sexy I’d always found his feet, how often in that honeymoon stage I’d sucked his toes, something he’d found odd but had tolerated.
Before followed After into the mudroom. My heart attempted to throw itself into my throat. Cory’s uniform fit his body even tighter, better than Flynn’s, as though it loved him. A pang of guilt worked its way through my nerves and arousal, because at that moment, I wanted this shiny new toy with his handsome, scruffster’s face and obvious bulge from his jockstrap more than my husband of ten years.
I wanted Cory more than any man in the history of Planet Earth. That’s what happens when you reach the End—you start to fantasize about random strangers, men you see on TV, the dude who delivers your mail.
I pulled two longnecks out of the fridge and greeted the men at the mudroom door with beer.
“Hey,” I said, and flashed what I hoped was my cutest grin.
Flynn avoided eye contact and gave me that tip of his chin that men of his design use when addressing others, a primitive gesture left over from the cave.
“Charlie,” Cory exclaimed, and grabbed hold of me for a theatrical spin.
I laughed, going along for the ride.
“Okay, none of that shit,” Flynn groused.
Cory smacked a kiss on my cheek. I drank in his incredible smell: sweat and sunlight, the dregs of whatever deodorant he’d slapped on before the game, the minty scent of his breath, likely owing to gum chewed in haste between dugout and destination.
“Hey,” Flynn barked. “I mean it. None of that romantic stuff, even in joking. That’s Rule Number One.”
“Yessir,” Cory said, and saluted. I wanted to blow him right then and there.
“The rest of the rules are, in order—”
And here they were: no kissing; Cory was instructed to wear a condom if things went that far; and this was only a one-time deal, no repeat performances allowed.
“And just to be clear, this is all for Charlie,” Flynn said. “I’m doing this for him.”
Cory groped my ass. “Anything else, boss?”
Flynn shrugged. Our glances crossed paths as I handed him his beer. I could see he was nervous, not exactly into it. Doing this for me? I’d assumed when he agreed that this was for us.
I faced After, my husband, and the heaviness on his brow, the scent his masculine body exuded—clean sweat with a hint of ocean or summer rain, testosterone working up through his epidermis—again made Flynn the handsomest man on the planet, and the only man I ever really wanted.
“Flynn?” I asked.
He unscrewed the bottle cap with his big hand and pitched it at the sink, his aim perfect.
“If you’d been able to do that out there on the field, dude, we’d have won today’s game,” Cory chuckled.
Suddenly, I resented Before. I despised myself even more for letting one of my secret fantasies escape the bedroom, turning it loose onto the world. I started to toss a wet blanket over the whole threesome idea when Flynn’s handsome mug broke with the fakest smile I’d ever seen on his face.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
It was sex, only sex, I told myself as we tromped down to Flynn’s man cave for the sweaty synthesis that followed. My husband had granted me one of those ultimate fantasies: a threesome with two men, real men. Men of a quality that pushed all of my triggers, dressed in dirty baseball uniforms, their sanitary sweat socks on huge feet, said socks not so white nor sanitary following the game.
“He loves feet,” Flynn said, as though reading my thoughts. After so many years together, perhaps he could.
“Feet?” Cory chuckled. “Go for it, dude.”
He pressed the damp toes of his right foot to my face, while I deeply breathed in his funk. In my imagination, this moment had been so much sexier. It always was with Flynn, sexier I mean, when I’d found myself in a similar position, between my husband’s hairy legs, worshipping his gigantic feet. I should have loved this. Cory certainly was, pawing at his meat through his baseball uniform pants. But . . .
“Feels weird but good,” he said after I liberated him of his socks and stirrups, and was licking the buttery stink from between his toes.
A porn flick played on the flat screen, something directly from Flynn’s extensive DVD collection. His attention, I noticed, was more on the action taking place between your typical, rugged stunt cock and two hot blondes than what was happening in the room directly beside him. He and Cory, sitting bare buttcheek to bare buttcheek, sipping beer, the air infused with their manly jock scent, might as well have been light-years apart.
“Keep going,” Cory said. “Dude . . . ”
Ten minutes earlier, I’d have sold a kidney, maybe my soul, to be where I was, high on Cory’s smell. Now, I wanted to get up, walk out, run away, and not look back.
“You got a hot tongue,” Cory said.
I drew back, feeling colder on that hot July afternoon than in the middle of a January snowstorm.
In any case, we went through with it. I licked Cory from his hairy ankles up to his hairier balls. Flynn took me i
n that place of mine he loved more than any other while I sucked his friend, his coworker, and his teammate’s cock, and did a fairly great job—after all, early on in the honeymoon stage of our romance, I’d gotten plenty of practice on Flynn’s bone. I ate his asshole, which Cory loved, and when he nutted, he played the role of the man, the stud, the victor.
“You ought to turn this place into a sex dungeon,” he said on his way out the door.
He and Flynn punched knuckles. Cory slapped my ass, said he was looking forward to the next time, despite Flynn’s list of rules, and winked at me.
As his truck pulled out of the driveway, I hurried upstairs and brushed my teeth. After showering, I scrubbed my mouth out twice more, unable to get Cory’s taste off my tongue.
I pulled into a fetal curl on the bed. The scuffle of footsteps from big, bare feet drew my haunted eyes to the bedroom door. Flynn leaned against the frame, clad only in boxer-briefs and T-shirt, arms crossed, his face difficult to read.
“I thought you wanted this.”
“I thought I did, too,” I said.
Flynn shrugged. My eyes wandered over his body. So handsome, my tall and rugged After, proof of a long and mostly happy life lived together. “Okay, so we gave it a shot.”
“Yeah. Maybe you should try being with a woman again.”
Flynn scowled. “What makes you think I want anyone other than you?”
I uncurled my body, eased up to my elbows, and saw Flynn, my Flynn, through what felt like new eyes. “Really?”
“After all this time, do you still have doubts?”
I struggled to answer. Flynn uncrossed his arms and strutted over. My heart galloped. He leaned down, crushed our mouths together, and hugged me with a gentleness I’d forgotten him capable of expressing.
“I love you, Charlie,” he said.
And then, over the course of the next few days, he proved it in actions as well as words.
So here’s the part where the fucking sling comes in.
Flynn and I had pretty much arrived at some conclusions following our tryst with Cory. First, no more threesomes, because what looks good on paper doesn’t always translate into the real world. And last, we had reached that part of a relationship that follows the End: the Afterlife, a state in which we both needed to work harder at keeping the passion between us fed. Also, that parting shot from Cory offered Flynn the opportunity to put his carpentry skills to use.
He bought fine leather, grommeted it, fixed it to chains, and secured the chains to eyehooks drilled up into the basement ceiling. During this time, while he screwed and hammered, I was forbidden from entering Flynn’s man cave.
“It’s a surprise,” was all he said.
Days after he started, Flynn shepherded me down the stairs blindfolded and walked me into place. He removed the blindfold, and there it was before me: a leather sling, suspended from the ceiling, in clear view of the flat screen for those fucking occasions when a ball game happened to be on.
“What do you think?” asked Flynn.
I could tell by his excited tone and the look on his face how proud he was of his creation. I reached for Flynn’s gorgeous mug and drew him down to me. “I think it’s amazing—just like you.”
Our mouths crushed together as clothes came off through a series of rough fumbles and rips. I stood naked before Flynn, who was now clad only in blue jeans. I hadn’t forgotten how magnificent his torso looked, with all that coarse chest hair and the treasure trail cutting him down the middle to the top of his underwear’s elastic band, though the pleasant reminder stole my breath. I dropped to my knees and gawked at his big, bare feet— heavenly distraction! I unzipped, fumbled down his jeans and boxer-briefs, and then licked his balls until I was stoned on their musky scent.
“Oh, yeah, Charlie . . . just like that!”
I sucked the helmet of Flynn’s cock between my lips and again grew intimate with his thickness, opening wider until his thatch of pubic hair tickled my nose. I toyed with his nuts, caressed his athlete’s legs, tasted the first salty-sour tang of skeet from his balls.
Flynn scooped me up and set me in the sling. Clearly, he’d put plenty of thought into the deal. My ass was now at the perfect height for him to access—first with his tongue. After feasting upon me, he straightened, held his cock by the base of its shaft, and entered. My entire body came alive, as it had in days long passed.
He pushed in, all the way to his balls, drew back so that only the head of his dick was still lodged inside my asshole, and slammed back, again and again. Sweat flowed, along with a whole stream of obscenity-laced endearments. “Fuck, I love you, Flynn,” I moaned.
And then the sling broke, spilling us both down to the floor in a tangle of limbs, torn leather, and busted chains.
“What the fuck?” Flynn roared.
His cock was still inside me, beyond hard. Our wide, unblinking eyes locked together. I began to laugh as the silliness of our situation worked past my shock. Then Flynn joined in, and we were howling, bawling, unable to catch our breaths. And I remembered one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with him way back when: his wonderful and sexy sense of humor.
Oh, and a nice set of feet sure doesn’t hurt.
So here’s what happens in the Afterlife of any relationship lucky enough to prevail, as Flynn’s and mine had. If you remember that you love that handsome, strapping man’s man as much as I love Flynn, and you understand how easy it is to get lazy, then together you’ll make a conscious effort at keeping things fresh. Flynn had, and I found myself happier and hornier than ever before.
THE INSTRUMENT
Dale Chase
Beethoven was my passion. Richard favored Mozart, but I loved him anyway. When his mother died and left him a Russian Hill apartment and season tickets to the San Francisco Symphony, we settled comfortably into our Victorian digs and fall concerts. We liked to think our passion for music had been there all along, reminding ourselves we’d amassed a good-sized musical library, but in truth our concertgoing had been sporadic. We soon found that regular attendance took music appreciation to an entirely new level.
Even though Richard considered Beethoven too dramatic, he nevertheless paid homage, his hand discreetly traveling to my thigh during a performance, promising that he would do as well by me as did the maestro. I would make similar gestures when Mozart played, even though I considered the music highly predictable. For Bach, we usually held hands.
Symphony nights were events: dinner beforehand at a fancy restaurant, drinks afterward, then the ride home, already hot for each other, both of us hard. We’d scarcely be inside the door before we’d be pulling at each other. I’d then mount him on the floor, evening clothes scattered, Oriental rug beneath us.
Richard was a glorious specimen, ten years my junior. I’d picked him up in a bar years before and kept him, his lithe body nurturing my own, staving off the inevitable. He’d proven to be spirited yet pliant, readily admitting to needing direction. Over the years, he’d gone to such great lengths to distance himself from a stifling upbringing that he’d lost his way in, and so I helped him find it again, choosing his career, his look, returning him to the culture he’d abandoned, all the while fucking him. I found him receptive to everything, and if I plied him with liquor, receptive beyond that. I’d had my prick in that delicious ass of his in every corner of the apartment and repeatedly on the terrace, which was, in fact, his favorite playground. In our twelve years together, we seemed to have done it all, or at least all we wanted. We had, I suppose, slipped into habit, and so, when Bach appeared on the symphony schedule, I anticipated nothing new.
“It’s that young British violinist,” Richard said one Saturday morning. “Trevor Conley.”
“What will he be doing?”
“The Sonatas and Partitas, Two and Three.”
I put down my Chronicle. “Really?”
Richard nodded. “Have we seen anyone do them?”
“The number three prelude once as an encore.”
<
br /> “Well, he’s doing it all.”
Richard knew these pieces ranked high with me, especially the Chaconne from Partita No. 2. That final fifteen minute movement took me beyond words. “You’ll go then?” he asked.
“Don’t act so surprised; of course I’ll go.”
“I usually have to break your arm to get you to a weekday performance.”
“It’s not usually the Bach sonatas,” I replied.
The violin had, over time, proved to be my musical undoing. Richard had learned to appreciate its erotic effect, trusting a good performance by the soloist would result in a good performance by me. During the same period, Richard gradually became enamored of the piano, and while he loved to suck me off to the strain of Mozart, he did allow that Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto was a piano masterwork and became embarrassingly erect during those wonderful opening chords.
In my honor, he tried to assimilate my passion for the violin, but his cock would sag as he labored through a sonata, and I was left on my own, so to speak, fucking him to the haunting Chaconne that often made me weep and come simultaneously. As time went by, Richard decided the violin itself had become an erotic tool. “You’d fuck one if you could,” he once said.
“Fuck a violin?” had been my response.
He’d pulled away from me, limp cock in retreat. “You’d find a way,” he’d said, disappearing into the bathroom.
“Richard,” I called after him that day, but he didn’t respond. “Oh, Richard.”
It was then that I noticed that the Sunday paper had a piece about young Trevor Conley, a relative unknown to us. As Russian, Israeli, and Japanese violinists proliferated, the British remained a bit obscure. We’d seen the charismatic Nigel Kennedy in his prime, ever the adorable and talented punk, and he’d even done the Beethoven Violin Concerto—I liked to think for me—but Kennedy was aging now, while Conley was a mere twenty-two. How vain of me to look to youth. Richard, himself now forty, noted this as I looked at Conley’s picture.
“He’s straight, you know.”