Midtown Masters

by Cara McKenna

  Another moan.

  “On your back,” she said.

  John slowed, eased himself out. Meyer made it onto his back, arms looking shaky. His face was a sight that would haunt John’s dreams. Lust and need were etched across every strained feature.

  He spread his legs and John found his way back inside, going slow, discovering the angle all over again.

  Face-to-face, this was infinitely more intense. A different act. Meyer’s crown brushed John’s belly each time he slid deep, feeling obscene and electrifying. Meyer held John’s head with one hand, the other palm cupped to the back of his neck.

  “Tell me I can come,” he said.

  The question washed over John like lava. “Of course you can.”

  “Say it. Tell me to.”

  He swallowed, struck shy for a breath. Before he obeyed, he pushed in deep, drew out, again and again, quicker, quicker, until the hunger had redoubled, leaving no room for nerves.

  “Come,” he told Meyer.

  “How?”

  “Come on my cock.”

  A moan told him he’d said the magic words.

  “Suzy,” Meyer panted.

  She didn’t ask for clarification. She just lay down alongside them and fisted Meyer’s cock. As she began to stroke she asked, “Like that?”

  “Faster. Make it match the way he’s fucking me. Jesus fuck, don’t stop.”

  John thought that was meant for him. It was hard to say, with Meyer’s eyes squeezed tight. In any case he had no intention of stopping. The only thing that could ruin this was if he beat Meyer there, and it was starting to feel like a possibility. The friction was good, so good, and there was that pained and beautiful face, the smell of him, the smell of Suzy. Both of them, here beneath him, somehow. He watched her hand, the way its tendons flashed with every long pull. Watched Meyer’s cock, saw his excitement beading, gleaming when Suzy’s hand worked it along his crown.

  Those hands on John’s head and neck began to tremble, and a shallow moan filled the space between their mouths. “Fuck. Please. Please.”

  Suzy said, “Come on, Meyer. You’re taking him so fucking good. Take that cock.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’ve wanted this for weeks. Exactly this. Now show him how good it is. How bad you’ve been needing it.”

  “Yeah. Please. Fuck me, John.”

  John gave it as hard as he dared, lit up, filled to bursting with aggression and awe and near-crippling need. Hang on. Hang on. Needing a distraction, he leaned in close, seeking Meyer’s mouth. Just a shared, steaming exhalation, then another, then a kiss. Sloppy and shallow and desperate as Meyer unraveled against him.

  A choked sort of sound, a wild grunt, and there it was—the feel of slick heat basting his belly, punctuated by the rhythmic glance of Suzy’s stroking fist and the fluttering squeeze of Meyer’s body.

  “Oh. Slow, slow.” Meyer’s back had arched as he came and it sagged now in surrender.

  John eased up, slowing and then stopping completely. He could feel his pulse hammering in his cock.

  I really just did that. Fucked a man, yes, but so much more. Pleased one. Pleased this one, who’d forgotten more about sex than John would ever know. He could feel the proof of it cooling against his own skin.

  “Out,” Meyer said, squeezing John’s neck. “Slowly.”

  He took that order as well, Meyer’s breath hitching as he finally slid free.

  “Sit at the edge,” Meyer said. He sounded drunk or crazed and he was moving himself, leaving the bed to kneel before it.

  John settled above him, spreading his legs. This felt different than at the hotel. More taboo or more exciting, having a man on his knees this way.

  “Clean him up,” Suzy said. She was moving behind John, covers rustling, mattress shifting.

  Meyer held each of John’s thighs and brought his face close. John leaned back and let him do what he never would have thought to ask for—laving the mess from his belly with slow, shameless laps of his tongue. When there was nothing left, Meyer stripped the condom, exposing John’s fevered skin to the cool, quenching air.

  Suzy joined Meyer on the floor, snaking a hand up the back of his neck and fisting his hair. “Now you show him how grateful you are.”

  John didn’t even get a chance to shiver—he was swallowed in heat as those lips came down around him, taking him halfway on the first taste, then further, further.

  “God, don’t stop.” The words tumbled free in a gasp.

  It was incredible, exquisite. Unbelievable. The two people John most lusted for in heaven and earth and they were both here, both pleasuring him. Meyer with his mouth, Suzy with her presence, her voice, the dark edge she brought to the act, being the cruel lover John wasn’t ready to embody. Not entirely. He knew, too, that what she was demanding was what Meyer craved. It was the memory he wanted to take to bed with himself in the coming days or weeks. John wanted that too. To be this man’s fantasy, as the Parkses had so often been for him.

  “Take him,” she said, still gripping Meyer’s hair. “Nice and deep.”

  John felt more than just his lips and tongue and the suction of the act—he felt Meyer’s stifled moans humming all around him. That was what had him close. Close to the brink, and close to begging, in fact. Meyer liked him in control so he held in those pleas, let every other sound spill forth instead. Every ugly, beastly grunt and groan, so like the ones vibrating around his cock.

  Then, in a flash, it was too much. Too much pleasure to bear, a force of nature so strong it was frightening. He felt Suzy’s hands under his own, felt Meyer’s wet mouth and spoiling lips, felt the world give way. As the orgasm tore him apart he locked his eyes on Meyer’s face, contorted with pleasure-pain. Oh, he knew that feeling now. His gaze took in every feature, made a pornographic postcard of this moment.

  As the relief crested it was Suzy he looked to. Her parted lips looked flushed, brow creased, eyes hot. He froze that face in his mind as well, such a dark and predatory side to the kindest woman he thought he’d ever met.

  He released her hands, and in turn she let Meyer’s head go. Meyer sat back, breathing hard. His cheeks were flushed and his normally neat hair was a sweaty tangle. I did that to him, John marveled, feeling drunk.

  Meyer got to his feet, legs quaking visibly. He collapsed across the mattress with an almighty grunt, sounding like he’d just finished a marathon. “Oh. Fuck me.”

  “Again?” Suzy teased.

  A curt little laugh. “Yes. Let me sleep for three days, then yes.”

  Suzy plopped down beside him, rubbing his back.

  “Excuse me a moment.” John grabbed his underwear off the floor and his glasses from the dresser and half staggered to the bathroom. He tidied himself up, splashed cold water on his face. Leaned in close to the mirror to study himself without his glasses, trying to see if he looked any different. It felt as though he did. His eyes looked . . . wild. Spent, but wild all the same.

  And why shouldn’t they? Never in his life had he ever felt so acutely animal.

  Would it be like a secret he kept, to move through his days from now on, dressing as he did, presenting to the world as one man, but carrying around the memories of this entirely new one? A dark, hot, thrilling secret to warm him in an instant on the coldest winter night, to steel him when he might catch himself feeling meek?

  Who am I now? he wondered, slipping on his glasses to regard himself. What man was this that they’d turned him into for a night?

  Or was he inside me all this time, just waiting to be let out?

  Whatever the case, there was no going back. Not all the way. He’d gone from a man too gentle to watch half the clips on the Parkses’ Web site to one capable of starring in them. Perhaps only for a single night, but nonetheless.

  John Lindsay was an innocent no more.

  Chap
ter Twenty-three

  Meyer left not too much later, insisting that he preferred not to sully his filthy memories with anything so wholesome as a sleepover. He parted with a kiss for Suzy and a possessive, rough squeeze of John’s nape, extinguishing the candles then leaving them to pass out amid the tangled bedclothes and the heavy scent of sex.

  The two of them passed a quiet Sunday morning, more in bed than not. In fact, wholly in bed, minus a shower apiece and the odd trip to the kitchen for coffee or tea or toast.

  The sex was sweet and simple, peppered here and there with dirtier remembrances of the previous night’s misdeeds. Suzy’s heart dropped a little each time she glanced at the clock, knowing the time was growing closer and closer to when they’d need to climb into her car and get John back to the airport.

  “We ought to get lunch,” she lamented, sighing. But they were naked and comfortable, sprawled across the messy bed. Even as her stomach rumbled, the thought of dressing and making sandwiches sounded like the bleakest sentence.

  John was lying on his back, with a satisfied smile on his handsome face, eyes shut. They blinked open and he rolled onto his side. “Probably.”

  Suzy did the same. “Sounds exhausting, though, doesn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  She kissed him, grinning as she pulled away. “Did I mention you did good?”

  “You may have.” He’d just given her head for the second time. She’d needed the aid of her own hand to push herself over the edge, but he was proving a quick study and an enthusiastic pupil.

  “I’m pretty sure eating pussy’s one of the trickiest of all the sexual arts,” she said. “And I say that as someone who’s been there a couple times. You’re going to be just fine.”

  After a pause, he laughed—nearly soundless, evidenced by a broad, joyful grin and a chuckle so soft she’d have taken it for a sigh, had her eyes been closed.

  She smiled back, charmed by the easy openness of the gesture. So natural, and yet surprising. The John Lindsay she’d first laid eyes on a month ago would have been far too nervous to laugh this way. Too guarded, too anxious.

  She poked his arm. “What’s so funny?”

  “Just . . . everything. That I’m here in this bed. Your bed. Talking like this. Having done all the things I have, now.”

  “Sex is nothing if not surprising. If you do it right, anyhow.”

  “No one’s more surprised than me by where sex has taken me, these past couple of weeks. Further than I ever expected, and so quickly I can barely believe it’s all happened.”

  “I’ll bet . . . But no regrets, I hope?” She studied the blue of those eyes, trying to memorize it.

  He shook his head. “No, of course not. Not a one. Only perhaps that I hadn’t met you both when I was twenty-something, instead of the cusp of forty.”

  “Could this have happened when you were twenty-something? Could twenty-five-year-old John have gone all the places you have, with us?”

  “Oh, gosh . . . Not any of the things I did with Meyer, no. In fact, twenty-five-year-old me probably would have passed out just looking at the Web site. He never, ever would have had the courage to write a request message, let alone to actually go through with it.”

  “What makes this John—” she poked his chest softly “—so up for it?”

  “Time and experience. And desperation,” he added, grinning. “And those terrible book reviews.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to send out thank-you notes.”

  John touched her arm, two fingertips drawing lazy paths across her inner elbow. The contact made her shiver, but it was the thoughtlessness of the touch that flashed hot. Nothing about sex had been thoughtless for this man a few weeks ago. To imagine she had a hand in this transformation was more gratifying than a hundred orgasms.

  “I don’t have the thinnest skin when it comes to criticism,” he said. “I did when I was first published, but when your books sell millions of copies there’s absolutely no way everyone’s going to love them, or even like them. I don’t usually read reviews unless my publicist forwards them, but the odd negative one makes its way to me. I usually roll my eyes and shut the tab.”

  “Good.”

  “But the ones that lambasted my sex scenes . . . Those hurt,” he said. “Like a knife straight in the heart hurt.”

  “Aww.”

  He stared past her shoulder at some point in the distance, fingers idly tracing her skin. She didn’t want this touch to ever end.

  “I can take criticism of my plotting,” he went on. “My dialogue, my characters—that’s all a matter of taste. But sex has never been simple for me. I’ve always felt like an imposter, writing those scenes, and having them ripped to pieces felt as though someone had found me out. It was viscerally painful.”

  “I’m sure it would be.”

  “But my job is so much a part of my identity, I had to do something about it. Or rather . . .” He seemed to consider it for a long moment, eyes narrowing, then growing wide. “Maybe that was the only kick in the ass that was going to get me to do anything about my sex life, or lack thereof. A kick in the ego.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve never felt viable, romantically. Never had cause to build my identity around romance or sex. But when my uselessness in those arenas seemed able to hurt my career . . . Yes, that was it, really. Missing out on those things for myself, I was used to that. It was a given. But to feel like it was hurting my writing was unbearable. Huh.”

  “Never thought about it quite like that, I take it?”

  “Not with that much clarity, no.”

  “I hope maybe you’ve found something in all this for yourself, too, as well as your writing.”

  Another smile—a soft, bashful one that melted her heart. “I hope you know the answer to that already.”

  “It never hurts to hear someone say it.”

  A pause, then he put his hand to her jaw, leaned closed, kissed her. Sweet and soft, lingering. When he let her go, he told her, “I’ve found far more than I ever expected. And I have no idea where all of this goes, or if I’ll never see you again after we say good-bye this afternoon, but that’s all right. You’ve played such a huge part in making me feel whole, and functional, like a member of the human race, really . . . I can’t say how much you’ve changed me. Or possibly thank you adequately, for all it’s meant.”

  “Oh, jeez, don’t make me cry.” Already she felt the tears building and her lips getting quivery.

  “It probably doesn’t look like much from the outside,” he said, “the ways I’ve changed. It must look like just a few nights of fun, a dozen or so sex acts that seem tame to someone as adventurous as you. But it’s been so much more to me. Like glimpses of a person I could be, if I wanted it badly enough.”

  “Sure.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever be the man I was to Meyer last night in my everyday life, but to be a tourist in that world, and to walk away feeling I was adequate, as a partner . . . I can’t say that anything I’ve done with either of you has made me feel powerful, like I have any mastery to boast of, or natural prowess, but . . . I don’t know how to word it.”

  “Like you got called into the game and didn’t make an ass of yourself,” she hazarded.

  He laughed. “Yes, very apt. I didn’t score any game-winning goals, but I didn’t humiliate myself, either. Sad as it sounds, I suppose I always assumed it would end in humiliation.”

  “It must feel very nice to be proven wrong.”

  “Yes. It does. And I have you to thank for it.”

  “Give yourself some credit, John.”

  “I do, I promise. But it’s hard to imagine this going as it has if it was anyone but you holding my hand through it all.”

  “Oh.” She felt her cheeks warm and pushed a teasing fist into his chest a couple times. “Smooth talker.”

 
; He cleared his throat, rolled over to check the clock. “I suppose we really ought to eat. And I really ought to get organized.”

  “Grab a quick shower and I’ll throw something together,” she said, standing, twisting her messy hair into a bun. “You don’t want to alarm the TSA by turning up reeking of sex.”

  He laughed. “I don’t know. I might find that strangely satisfying.”

  He stood, and Suzy stole a quick kiss. “See you in the kitchen. Leftovers and a salad sound okay?”

  “Sounds heavenly.”

  She couldn’t resist giving his butt a good smack when he leaned over to gather his jettisoned clothes, and giggled when he jumped.

  “Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.”

  “My fault for dressing this way.”

  She nodded. “You were asking for it.”

  His smile was wan and charming. “See you in ten.”

  Yes, she thought as she watched him disappear into the hall. But once she dropped him at the airport, how long until she got to see him again?

  No matter the answer, it all translated to not nearly soon enough.

  ***

  Suzy woke with a romantic hangover the next day, one that dogged her well into the week. It almost felt like she had the flu, or had just been dumped—nothing tasted all that good, nothing sounded like much fun, and she was definitely phoning it in with her and Meyer’s camming performances.

  To cap it all off, on Thursday she woke to a technical crisis.

  She was sitting before the Parkses’ laptop with her morning coffee in hand and snatched her phone off the desk, heart racing.

  Meyer answered after a few rings. “Good morning, sex partner.”

  “Hey, something’s funky with the Web site. I was checking the calendar and it’s wiped—all our bookings going forward.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I’m going to call the Web guy, but in the meantime, you didn’t happen to write down any of the clients or times or anything, did you? Especially the next few days’ worth. Especially tonight’s—it’s not a regular and I can’t remember what time he booked.”