Best Gay Erotica of the Year, Volume 3

by Rob Rosen

  BLACKOUT

  T. Hitman

  A restless autumn wind scattered sheets of rain and shook the trees around Hampshire House. Most of the dorm’s residents were gone for the night, partying or fucking or home for the long weekend. I felt alone on the second floor, though I wasn’t the only soul left in the place. Jim was working out in the weight room when the lights went dark. I knew he was down there, sweating and pumping and half-mad with nicotine withdrawal, due to the fact that he’d recently quit smoking. I’d seen him an hour earlier on my way up to my room, but now I could sense him under the floorboards, dripping with sweat, a force of nature, just like the storm itself.

  My bed sat directly above the weight room, and when the lights cut out, blown dark by the storm, I heard him huff, “What the fuck?” as I dropped the paperback I’d been reading in bed, too tired to jerk off for what would’ve been the third time that night.

  Jim was a year younger than me, twenty, a tall jock with a killer body who got hooked on cancer sticks young and was waging a private war to banish their power over him. Hampshire House was a Greek Revival–style manor that had become home to a mix of college athletes floating through on sports scholarships, as well as liberal arts students. He was one of the former; I hailed from the latter.

  James Bowden—his official name—lived in the dorm room two doors down from me. I met him for the first time at the end of August while he and a pair of his buddies from the football team were talking loudly, their butts planted on a mattress destined to be soaked in buckets of come, judging by Jim’s amazing good looks. He pushed six-two in height, sported an athlete’s cut of dark brown hair, eyes that of the same color, and, on that day, he was clean shaven. He wore a T-shirt, a ball cap with a frayed bill, white socks, a pair of old sneakers on big feet, and black workout shorts that showed off decent leg muscles and lots of hair.

  “Welcome to Hampshire House,” I’d said.

  We shook hands. I was instantly smitten.

  Just over a month later, about an hour before the lights went out, I saw Jim pacing around his dorm room on my way to mine, the dude clearly unable to sit for any length of time. The school had kept the original hardwood floors during Hampshire House’s renovation after the building was donated for student housing by a generous benefactor. Those floors groaned and squeaked constantly, loudly. I swore Jim had to have been sliding across them in his giant, socked feet. Or fucking cheerleaders by the twos and threes, though I never saw a single one hanging out there with him, just his jock buddies. When I couldn’t stand the racket a moment longer, I got up and wandered out of my room.

  Jim paced the floor.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He told me he had quit cold turkey and offered up a smile that looked half-crazy.

  “Better for your health, dude,” I said. “You don’t want to stroke out in the middle of a game-winning touchdown.”

  Jim again flashed that grin, showing a length of white teeth, the gesture more snarl than actual smile. I told him that if he needed anything, he knew where I was. He grumbled something about working out in the downstairs gym. I returned to my room and jerked off to thoughts of licking the sweat off his hairy nuts and gulping down a load of his skeet, one of my favorite new hobbies when not studying or trying to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with my education.

  Then the lights went out, and out they stayed.

  Hampshire House’s downstairs was divided between a main gathering spot with couches and a long study table, the boiler room, and an oblong area that got converted into a residents’ gym with weights, step machines, a pair of mismatched exercise bikes, and mats over the ancient hardwood floor.

  Jim went down there a lot. If he wasn’t pacing back and forth, the cadence of his nervous footsteps audible on the squeaky floors, even two stories up, if he wasn’t jamming to music on his earbuds or banging away at a video game when he should’ve been cramming, he was in the weight room. At ten o’clock that Friday night, with Jim in the desperate throes of craving a cancer stick and probably willing to sell his soul for one, fate played the ultimate fuck-you and knocked out the power, plunging half the town in darkness.

  Dressed in boxer-briefs and a tatty old T-shirt, with the scum of two loads dried or drying on the hairs of the happy trail that dissected my stomach, I bolted upright in my dorm room as the whole world was plunged into shadows. The world shifted from light and the white noise of the desktop computer in the background to pitch-black darkness that was just as extreme and immediate. After it happened, the only sounds were the throb of the windblown rain against the windows and then the angry, exasperated groan of Jim’s voice from beneath the floorboards.

  Jim and I weren’t friends, not in the real sense. We weren’t guys who confided about our problems or high-fived over exaggerated tales of a hot weekend fuck; we were guys who greeted each other in the hallway, or if I passed through the downstairs on my way to take out the trash and happened to catch sight of him lifting weights, the hair on his legs damp with sweat. Which was often enough, because the guy had great ones and was determined to keep in top physical shape. I’m a leg guy, so Jim probably thought I had the cleanest room in all of Hampshire House, considering how many times I hit the dumpster by way of the basement door.

  Anyway, though not really friends, I did however feel protective enough of my dorm brother to ensure he wouldn’t break his neck stumbling around down there in the dark. And so I fumbled my cell phone off the nightstand and headed out of my room dressed in my undershorts.

  The hallway was cloaked in total darkness, broken only by the battery-powered exit signs. Heart in my throat, I trudged toward the staircase, then down the twenty or so steps to the weight room. I aimed the phone’s screen toward the mats and exercise equipment. Just as the piney, masculine stink of fresh perspiration ignited in my nostrils, the beam touched upon glistening leg muscles. Jim was stretched out on his spine atop one of the weight benches, an arm thrown over his eyes. For a second or two, my gaze lingered on his crotch, long enough for me to see that he wasn’t wearing underwear. One sweat-soaked, hairy nut hung loosely out of his workout shorts.

  I forced my gaze up to his face. “Yo, dude,” I said.

  He startled out of the thoughts he’d fallen victim to and bolted upright. “Hey, man,” he said. “What the fuck’s up with the lights?”

  “They’re out, numb-nuts.”

  He huffed an exasperated sigh and absently scratched at his crotch. “I was waiting to see if they’d come back on, but that don’t look like it’s gonna happen any time soon.”

  “The way this storm’s blowing through, they could be off all night,” I said. “Anyway, I heard you down here and wanted to make sure you didn’t kill yourself going up the stairs.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “What else you up to?”

  “Nothing. I was reading a book, about to crash early, so it’s no big loss to me.”

  Jim shook his head. “I won’t be able to sleep. Can’t.”

  I blame what I said to him next on the crisis atmosphere. “Jerk off, then. It works for me.”

  He snorted, stood, stretched. His T-shirt rode up his stomach, revealing a decent pattern of fur just above the top of his shorts. “If I abuse my dick anymore, it’ll fall off.”

  I unintentionally shot a look at the meaty fullness of Jim’s crotch. “Whatever works, dude. You want to borrow this? I have a few games on it.” I extended the phone in his direction. Jim smiled, then shook his head. Since quitting the smokes, he’d sprouted a mustache and goatee on his handsome mug, and at that moment I realized how much I longed to kiss him. “You sure?” I yammered, my mouth suddenly bone dry.

  “Yup,” he said.

  “Well, if you need anything, just knock.”

  He promised he would and I started back up the stairs. My room welcomed me into its throbbing stillness. I briefly considered reading my paperback by phonelight and beating off again, which I’d done less than an hour earlier. I s
ettled instead for passing out. Sleep, however, eluded me.

  After a while, I heard the cadence of pacing footsteps on the other side of my door. They began, stopped, started up again. Jim, I assumed, was in the grip of a merciless nicotine fit. Back and forth he went. Eventually, I heard a furtive rapping of knuckles. I peeled myself off the bed, grabbed my phone, and padded barefoot to the door.

  For reasons I couldn’t identify at first, my heart began to pound. A step short of the threshold, I realized it was thumping around in my chest so hard because I knew it would be Jim waiting on the other side, because it was a crazy, stormy night, a night when anything could happen.

  Jim’s handsome face glowed at the open door in the light cast by the phone screen. “Hey,” he said.

  I flashed a sleepy smile. “S’up?”

  “You mind some company?”

  I didn’t, especially not his. “Come on in,” I said, extending a hand. Jim strutted in wearing white socks, no sneakers, and the same clothes he’d worked out in. The piney smell of his sweat trailed him into the room.

  I closed the door and plunked my ass on the edge of the bed. Jim remained standing with his arms folded, and fidgeted in place, rocking from foot to foot. Had he not been so damn handsome, just looking at him would have worn me out.

  “This fuckin sucks,” he growled. “Can’t watch the tube, play videos, listen to tunes, and my laptop can’t hold battery power worth a shit.”

  “Relax, man,” I soothed. “Pretend you’re sitting around a campfire.”

  “Yeah, like that would ever happen.”

  “Have a seat,” I said forcefully. I rose from the bed and reached into the fridge. I pulled two sweaty bottles of beer from the darkness inside and handed one to Jim. He twisted off the cap and knocked back a swig. The suds, still cold, seemed to calm us both.

  “So, what are you up to?” he asked.

  “Nothing. Sleep.”

  Jim let loose with a goofy chuckle. “Yeah, right. You were probably beating your meat, dude, just like you said.”

  The comment momentarily caught me off guard. When I could think clearly again, I said, “So what if I was?”

  A flush of embarrassment rippled over his face, the redness visible in the phone’s glow. Large beads of sweat appeared across his forehead. “I sort’a wish you would,” he said. “Anything to distract me from how bad I need a smoke.” His eyes briefly met mine before darting away.

  My heartbeat hammered in my ears, sounding twice as loud thanks to the imposed silence surrounding us. It grew steadily harder to breathe, to rationalize. Before I could stop myself, I said, “If that’s what you need, I’ll whip it out if you do.”

  In the broken light, I saw Jim’s hairy throat knot under the influence of a heavy swallow. “Okay,” he grunted in a broken voice. He was serious. Just how serious didn’t sink in until he spread his legs and went fishing. I watched, mesmerized, as he hauled out his fat tool, already half-stiff, a good thick seven or eight inches of cut meat with a head shaped like a fleshy arrow. His sac spilled out with it, loose and furry, heavy with his as yet un-spilled seed. Jim yanked on his balls and moaned. “Your turn.”

  My dick had toughened, too, I discovered, and had quietly put a tent in my boxer-briefs. I kicked off my underwear and saw the moist tip glistening in the phone screen’s wan glow. Mine wasn’t as thick or as long as Jim’s, but it was enough of a handful for me and anyone else to enjoy. “Sorry, since there’s no power, we can’t watch a DVD or video. We’ll have to use our imaginations instead.”

  “That’s okay,” he grunted while stroking on his impressive tool.

  “Besides, all I have are gay movies, guy-on-guy,” I confessed. Nothing like a little power outage to make you forget the usual rules of hospitality. “And I’m sure you wouldn’t be interested in seeing any of that.”

  “Maybe I would,” Jim said. “At this point, anything.”

  And then he leaned closer. Without warning, his hand was on my knee. I flinched, gasping in surprise. In the murk of the shadows, it still hadn’t fully sunk in how blurry the boundaries had gotten in the darkness. His hand inched closer to my straining cock. The back of it brushed my shaft’s sensitive underside. He fondled my nuts. I about came from the rough fumble of his shaking fingers.

  “What are you telling me, dude? That you’re into it?”

  “Tonight, I’d do just about anything to get a blow job. Even give one,” Jim growled. “Help me out, man, and I’ll take care of you.”

  I looked into his eyes and found myself captivated by their intensity. It was true. The guy I’d whacked off thinking about for a month now held my dick in a choke hold. Seconds later, my head was between Jim’s hairy spread legs.

  I lapped at his ripe-smelling balls, tasting the funk of the night’s long workout. Breathing in that acrid musk, I gave each giant nut a gentle sucking before opening wide to accept as much as I could take of his dick. I gobbled; Jim moaned.

  Jim voiced his approval of the job I was doing through a string of breathless groans and half-muttered expletives. Not long after I started blowing him, he pulled me off his knob, and saying nothing, made good on his promise. I honestly didn’t think he would. Part of my racing consciousness even wondered, jokingly, if his oral fixation for cigarettes was what made him suck my dick. You know how quitters chew on pencils, suck on lollipops, or in Jim’s case, another dude’s erect dick. But he went down, and I didn’t protest. The helmet of my tool and about four inches of shaft vanished into his goatee.

  I’d given my share of head since landing at Hampshire House, but I’d also gotten enough to know mine wasn’t the first cock Jim had ever hummed on. I briefly remembered his teammates who visited his room, and now had new thoughts as to what they were doing in there.

  Next, he slapped his tongue over my balls. The sensation sent shudders through me, from my nipples on down to my toes. It was too good to waste on a quick orgasm; I wanted this to last.

  “Come up,” I gasped, and at first he misunderstood the meaning of my words for something else. Spitting out my dick, Jim raised his wet mouth to mine. I kissed him, tasting cold beer and hot precome on his lips.

  Jim shucked his T-shirt, his shorts, then finally, one at a time, his socks. This left him completely commando. I sat on the edge of the bed and studied his magnificent physique in the dying phone light for a few moments before again sucking his dick into my mouth.

  “Aw, fuck,” Jim groaned. He wrapped one of his big mitts around the back of my skull and proceeded to ride my face. Standing up left his nuts to dangle heavily under the root of his cock. I toyed with his low-hangers until he tackled me onto the bed and pinned me beneath his frame in an awesome sixty-nine.

  Jim’s tool flopped back into my waiting mouth. Being on my back also put me in the perfect position for a taste of his asshole. I stared up at the hard muscles of his butt, the twin hemispheres of a lightly forested globe, with a thin line of dark hair cutting it down the center. I massaged his cheeks, pried them open. Leaning up, I drilled my tongue into his hot pucker.

  He seized in place. “Yeah, dude, eat my hole!”

  Tugging on his cock, I drilled deeper, licking and lapping and probing until, at last, Jim started to squirt.

  His spunk sprayed my face and dribbled down my neck. I licked the tip of his over-stimulated dickhead and tasted salt and sourness as my entire body shuddered. My own orgasm shot partly in Jim’s mouth. The rest splattered off his goatee to land on my nut sac and drip down my inner thigh.

  Jim pulled off me and spun around, putting us face-to-face. Then he kissed me and we tasted ourselves. Our spent cocks ground together. Fresh sweat mingled with the staleness of his earlier workout. Jim collapsed on top of me and nibbled on my neck.

  I wrapped my arms around him. That’s pretty much where we were when the lights came back on in a thunderous surge of power, and life returned to normal in Hampshire House—whatever normal really is.

  THE LAST TIME

&nbs
p; I SAW HIM

  Jonathan Asche

  I was with Jason when the old man first appeared.

  We were in an abandoned house, the one I passed by walking to and from school. Cruising grounds. That’s what it was. The house was dark, but enough of the hazy afternoon sunlight peeked through boarded-up windows to highlight his blond curls. He was leaning against a crumbling wall, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans, feet crossed, his package bulging enticingly. He took one hand out of a pocket and slid it down the front of his pants.

  “So . . . ” He finished the line by squeezing his crotch.

  That’s all it took to seduce me. “I thought you were straight,” I said, putting my hands on Jason’s waist.

  His laugh was almost ethereal. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

  Still, he was hesitant when we kissed, though he warmed quickly to my lips. Warm turned to hot as he urged me lower down—and I was eager to go. I slowly unbuttoned his blue jeans, his underwear bulging forward as his fly parted. I grabbed the waistband of his briefs, looking up at him for assurance, to make sure this wasn’t about to be revealed as some cruel practical joke. In four years of high school, this guy never noticed me, but now that we’d graduated, he suddenly wanted me to suck his cock? It was too good to be true.

  Still, Jason nodded, a slight smile on his lips. “Go on,” he whispered. “Take it out.”

  I slowly pulled down his underwear, letting out an impressed gasp upon freeing his cock, which was as long and fat as I had always imagined it would be. The shaft was hot and throbbing in my grip. When I guided his dick into my mouth, Jason let out a moan that sounded as if it was out of relief as much as pleasure.

  His cock filled my mouth until it was hitting the back of my throat, and still I wanted more of him. Gripping his waist, I pulled him forward, encouraging him to bury the full length of his prick in my gullet. He groaned too loudly for my comfort. What if he’s heard from the street? I thought to myself. I’d endured cruel taunts and threats of violence throughout most of junior high and high school because of classmates’ suspicions that I was, in their words, a fag; I didn’t want to find out what would happen if their suspicions were proved true.