by Ellle Parker
I took one look at him, actually sucking me off, and knew what he’d meant when he said “wait and see.” I reached down to thread my fingers through his thick hair, and he moaned around my cock, leaning into my touch.
“Damn, Seth. You are somethin’ else.”
His response was to put his all into it, so I wouldn’t ever forget that, apparently. He was a marvel of hot mouth and clever tongue and strong hands, and I could barely remember my own name. My whole body shook, and when I finally came, I came hard, thrusting involuntarily and groaning with pleasure. He kept at it until I sat weak and breathless in the chair.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but my mind was blank.
“Like that better than your own right hand?” he asked, looking smug.
“What you do you think?”
“I think that’s the best blow job you’ve ever had.”
I rolled my eyes and gave him a look, because I wasn’t about to tell him it probably was. Not yet anyway. I sat up and slid off the edge of the chair, settling down on the floor with Seth between my legs. He fit himself against me and let me kiss him thoroughly.
When I stroked his hair, he moaned again and I said, “You like that…”
“Yep.” He nodded. “I like it a lot.”
“Kinda’…romantic for you, isn’t it?”
“Shut up.”
We stayed there half naked, pants undone, necking for half an hour. The mood was lazy and comfortable, but it was late, and Seth eventually yawned, reminding us both there was a world beyond our sexual desires and we were expected to be a part of it when morning came.
“I suppose we should think about heading to bed,” Seth mumbled, hanging his head over my shoulder.
“You can stay for the news if you like,” I told him, reaching for the remote and turning on the TV.
He grumbled his disappointment. “I could stay a lot longer. I need a bodyguard anyway.”
“I don’t know. I’d like you to stay, but I’m thinking it might be a good idea for both of us if you didn’t. Nothing’s happened since the breakin, I think you’re safe.”
Seth chuckled softly. “You need me to get out of your hair so you can freak out about doin’ it with a guy.”
“No, it’s not the guy part that freaks me out, it’s the friend part. I don’t want to lose a good friendship.”
He shook his head slowly and leaned in for a remarkably sensual kiss, which I imagine he meant to be reassuring, but came across to me like he didn’t want to make any promises he couldn’t keep. I slid my arms around him and pulled him close, not exactly sure what I should be feeling.
On the one hand, there was no question I was intrigued, and it seemed stupid to walk away from a good thing just in case it turned bad. On the other, I still wasn’t sure this was the right idea, because if things went wrong, I stood to lose my best friend. I couldn’t really see us going back to being buddies. Even if everything worked out, I really didn’t think I was Seth’s speed. Sooner or later, he was likely to wonder how in the hell he got himself mixed up with an old-fashioned dinosaur like me.
The whole thing gave me a headache. I sighed and put my head back on the cushion of the chair, squeezing my eyes shut and wishing for answers.
“Dino?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not supposed to start freaking out until after I go home.”
“I’m not freaking out,” I lied. “I’m fine.”
He made a rude noise and said, “Yeah, and I’m six feet tall and have a dick the size of a Buick.”
“Good thing I have big hands then.”
He laughed and climbed over me to head to the bathroom. While he was in there, I fastened my pants and went to find our shirts. Wandering around in the TV flicker, with the stereo playing in the background, reminded me of being in high school. I half expected Seth’s dad to barge in and threaten to beat the shit out of me.
When Seth came out, I gave him his shirt and helped him put it on because his ribs were hurting him again.
Seth said, “I’ve got a full load tomorrow. I’ll be busting my nuts at the shop all day. You want to swing by after work?”
“Yeah, I could do that.” I was about to say something else, but the picture on the news report caught my eye and I reached over to turn it up.
The anchorwoman had finished with the world news and was moving on to local headlines. “A tragic boating accident claimed the life of a young man in Clearwater early this morning. Police were called on the scene when bystanders noticed an overturned boat abandoned in the water. The body of the man police have identified as that of Darryl Serrano, was discovered nearby. It is believed that he drowned when his boat capsized. Serrano, aged twenty-four, was formerly of Miami and recently residing in St. Petersburg.”
Seth raised his eyebrows and looked at me curiously. “You buy that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible, I guess, but I don’t like the coincidence.”
“Me neither. At least I don’t have to worry about him breaking into my apartment again.”
“Yeah, well, watch your back anyway.”
“I always do.” He stepped backward away from me, reaching for the doorknob with a loopy smile. That damn near undid me, and I felt a pang of something a lot more than ordinary friendship.
Then he was gone, and for the second night in a row, I was left wondering what in the hell I’d gotten myself into.
After Seth left, I pulled out the package we’d found in the Corvette and set it on my desk. With everything that had happened in the past couple days, I’d been too busy to look at it. Serrano’s death coming right on the heels of the breakin, gave it a whole new importance.
I took the rubber bands off and unfolded the envelope. It was obviously recycled, pulled out of the trash or whatever, and used to keep the stuff together. Nothing remarkable about it, aside from providing an address for Serrano in Miami, and confirming the guy was interested in sex. Aren’t we all?
Next, I looked at the contents. A notebook, two keys and a swipe card. What the hell was so special about them they needed to be wrapped and hidden? It was certainly reason enough to trash someone’s place over, and maybe enough to kill.
The car key was one of those new electronic keys, and thanks to Seth, I knew it fit a BMW. I had no idea what model, other than a car with electronic keys would be new, and probably expensive. The small gold key on the ring was more mysterious. It could fit any number of things.
The key card was plain white, nothing on it all except for the magnetic strip. It wasn’t likely to be a hotel room key, since those all have the name and logo on them. I tried to think what other places I knew used them, but came up blank.
The last item was the notebook, and that was the oddest thing of all. I took the rubber band off, turned it upside down, and fanned the pages to see if anything fell out. Nothing did. The notebook itself was unremarkable. Just a spiral bound notebook smaller than an index card, with a dark green cover sporting the Mead logo. The edges of it were worn, like it got carried around a lot, but it wasn’t in bad shape.
I opened it to the first page, which had a phone number scribbled down the side of the paper, the way you do when you need to write something down quick. I made a note of it and kept going. I came to one of the pages that looked like it was written in code. There were sets of numbers listed down the middle, with a random letter thrown in here and there. It made zero sense to me. All together, I counted twelve pages like that, and two of them had the corners folded down.
Aside from those, there was a page that had two nicknames with phone numbers to go with each. The first was Snake, very original, and the other was Tango. It was like a bad Eighties movie. There were a couple of shopping lists, which might have been part of the code, but I didn’t think so. Nothing on the back cover, nothing inside the covers.
I spread everything on the desk in front of me and leaned back in my chair staring at the strange assortment. It hardl
y looked like anything someone would go to that much trouble for, but without knowing what the codes meant, I had no idea.
Unfortunately, my mind wasn’t really on the job. My thoughts kept drifting back to Seth. How he felt, how he kissed…and what he had in mind for us.
I put everything back in the package the way I’d found it and stashed in my desk, then snapped the light off and took my drink into my bedroom. Sleep was a long time coming.
Chapter 12
Tuesday at five thirty, I was done for the day and driving toward Seth’s with the top down, the radio on loud, and my suit jacket on the seat next to me. I was looking forward to seeing him again, but nervous too. I didn’t know what to expect. I kept thinking maybe it was all a fluke.
Only one way to find out. I pulled into the lot, hopped out of the car, and went into the garage to look for Seth. He wasn’t immediately visible, but that’s not unusual. “Seth?”
“Out back!” His voice drifted in through the side door, and I followed it to a spot behind the garage where he and Ed have a bunch of chairs set up in the shade of some palm trees.
It was the ugliest collection of plastic loungers and makeshift tables you’ve ever seen, but it was a hell of a place to hang out in the afternoon drinking beer and listening to a baseball game on the radio. Especially with Ed and a bunch of old codgers who were there in the days when baseball really was the American Pastime.
I turned the corner to find Seth alone, stretched out in a tacky green and white lounger he’d claimed for his own. He wore a T-shirt and jeans, and a pair of amber sunglasses. There was a six-pack of cheap beer on the table next to him, one of which he was already drinking.
“Hiya, sexy,” he said with a smile. “Got a beer here with your name on it.”
“Thanks,” I said, walking over and taking one. I twisted it open and tossed the cap into an old garbage can. “I talked to Teresa today. Got her to do a little digging on that Serrano thing for us.”
“Yeah? What did she say?” Seth took a drink.
“They’ve officially ruled it an accident. Police say there was alcohol involved, no signs of foul play, the whole nine yards. Notify the family, and case closed.”
He shook his head. “Still seems weird if you ask me.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Maybe someone was gonna repossess the boat, and he tried to tackle that too, but missed.”
I put my hand in my pocket and stood there sipping my beer, wondering what to say next. It was a whole new experience to be bullshitting like usual when I could vividly remember Seth going down on me.
“So, you done freaking out yet?” he asked.
I shrugged and studied the dirt around my feet. “Yeah. I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure what it’s supposed to feel like when I do.”
Seth drew his knees up and pointed at me. “We need to get you to stop thinking of me as a friend, and start thinking of me as that incredibly hot mechanic you’re sleeping with.”
“You are a friend, why do we need to do that?”
“Because you’re stiff as a board and not in the way I want you to be.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “I’m just sayin’ that I’d rather have you be both.”
“I still am, Dino, but you seem to be lagging behind in the viewing me as an incredibly hot mechanic department. Which, you know…” He stretched out on the lawn chair, posing for me. “You’re totally missing out, dude.”
“Is that so?” I asked, rocking back on my heels.
He nodded gamely. “I think you need a lesson in the old Donnelly sex appeal.”
I raised my eyebrows at him, and he smirked. He set down his beer and rubbed a hand down his chest to his groin, palming it lewdly. I rolled my eyes.
He seemed to take that as a challenge, because the smirk faded, and what I could see of his eyes through the amber glasses appeared to be fixed on me in the most mesmerizing way.
He popped open the button of his jeans and unzipped them, then dipped his hand inside, rolling his hips and sighing in a soft hum. When he seemed sure he had my attention, he licked his lips and started to rub his cock through his underwear.
I glanced around to see if there was anyone nearby who might notice what was going on. “Yeah, okay, Seth, you’re very sexy, point taken.”
He just smiled and pushed the underwear out of the way, exposing himself to me. Without a trace of self-consciousness, he ran his fingers lazily along the length of his prominent erection.
“I am not fooling around with you out here,” I told him. “Where’s Ed?”
“Ed is out junk hunting for the rest of the week, and you don’t have to fool around with me. Just watch.”
I got warm under the collar and short of breath when he wrapped his hand around his cock and started to stroke it slowly, settling back on the lounge chair and spreading his knees to give me a better view.
“You’re gonna jerk off right there?” I asked him. Which was a pretty stupid question, because that’s exactly what he was doing. Guys get like that when you put sex in front of us. Our brains go straight south.
“Oh yes,” he said, but the tone left me wondering if that was an answer, or a moan. The fact that he was biting his lip suggested the latter.
I felt conspicuous standing around while my friend—make that my hot mechanic friend—whacked off right there in broad daylight. Drinking my beer did nothing to alleviate that. Neither did loosening my tie.
“Oh man,” Seth panted. “Do that again.”
“Do what, drink beer or mess with my tie?”
“Both. Mostly the tie.”
I reached up and tugged on my tie for him. He rewarded me with a throaty moan and a roll of his hips. His hand worked steadily over his cock, and I found myself staring and thinking about putting my hands on his thighs. I had a raging hard-on.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” I said.
He gazed up at me, cheeks and neck flushed, free hand thrust under his shirt to rub his chest. “You have any idea how hot you’ve got me right now?”
“I don’t know,” I said, taking a deliberate sip of beer. “I think you better show me.”
“God,” Seth groaned, reaching up to grab the top of the chair behind him. The effect was stunning, and I noticed things about him I never had before, like the way the muscles in his neck moved when he swallowed, and the freckles on his forearms.
I almost lost it myself when he started rocking his hips and thrusting up into his own hand. He let his head roll back, muttering, “Oh please, oh please, oh please…”
“Please what?” I asked, captivated by what I saw. “I hope you’re not asking me for anything, because you told me I just had to watch. I’m not touchin’ you.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he cried out, and came with his back arched and his knees drawn up so he could brace his feet on the chair. His hips jerked reflexively a few times and come ran down his fingers, then he went slack, panting hard.
I was completely breathless, and stared at him helplessly. I wanted to come so bad I could taste it.
“Damn,” he said, reaching out for his beer. He looked down at himself and grinned. “I’m kind of a mess, eh?”
When I finally found my voice, I said, “I can’t believe you just did that.” I pulled my handkerchief out of my back pocket and held it out for him.
He stared at it and blinked. “Are you for real? What era were you born in?”
“You want it or not?” I asked, finishing my beer and throwing the bottle in the garbage can.
Seth took it and mopped himself up, then stuck it in his own jeans pocket. He looked up at me and laced his fingers behind his head. “Your turn.”
“Ah, no, I don’t think so.” I still had a desperate need to get off, but performing like a sideshow act really wasn’t my thing. Seth could sure as hell make it work, but I’d look like an ass.
He sat up and leaned forward, arms on knees, cocking his head at me. “Oh, yes, you are…”
I shook
my head and scowled at him. “What are you gonna do, make me?”
“That’s not a half bad idea,” he said, and leapt out of the chair.
He was on me before I had time to react, grabbing hold of my tie and pushing me up against the back of the garage. I could feel the concrete window ledge digging into my shoulders and smell the faint hint of gasoline. I could also smell the heat of Seth’s body, pressed up against me, emanating sweat and the spicy deodorant he wore.
“If you won’t do it, I’ll have to,” he said in a low voice, wrapping my tie around his fist, and yanking open my belt buckle.
If I’d thought my need to come was bad before, it was nothing compared to what I was facing now. I wasn’t going to last long at all. The power he had to turn me on was unnerving, and I wondered why I’d never known about it before.
Then Seth’s hand was in my pants, and I felt his fingers close around my dick, warm and strong. He didn’t give me any time to catch a breath, starting right in with long, firm strokes that had my knees weak in seconds.
“Jesus,” I gasped, bracing myself against the wall. I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, completely caught up in what he was doing to me.
“Oh, no, Dino.” He gave the tie a jerk, snapping me to attention. “You look at me. We’re workin’ on changing the way you see me, remember?”
I opened my eyes, took one look at the fierce, wicked determination on his face, and came almost immediately. I know it was more than watching him jerk off, and more than having him do me. The situation was so bizarre, what with being outside where anyone could see us, and Seth still wearing his sunglasses…hell, just the fact that it was Seth. Maybe it was the illicit thrill of the whole thing, but I don’t think I’ve come so fast in my whole life.
Maybe his idea worked, because when he got out the handkerchief and cleaned me up, it wasn’t nearly so weird. And when he took my tie off and opened up two more beers, that wasn’t very weird at all. Best of all, when we sat down in the lawn chairs and talked about the same shit we always did…that felt pretty normal. Maybe better.