Do You Trust Me?

by B. G. Thomas

  First Cole kissed me there, just beneath my balls, spreading outward, then drawing back in… closer… closer. Then he ran his hot, wet tongue fully up and down the cleft of my cheeks, and with each pass, that tongue ran hot and heavy over my asshole. Each time, I jumped. Each time, I cried out.

  Finally, he bent me near in half, worked himself up so that his knees and thighs were beneath me. My legs went crazy wide, and he focused on my hole—licking, sucking, probing. Slowly but surely a finger joined his tongue, worked itself into me… gently… gently, at first, and then more demandingly. It buried itself to the first knuckle, then deeper, to the second, wiggling, searching, and….

  “Aaaaaahhhh!” I shouted. He had found something within me, and as he touched it, massaged it, I thought I would go out of my mind!

  Cole stopped, and I cried out in frustration, and then a second finger joined the first. Through it all, he never stopped kissing, licking me there, getting even his tongue deep inside me. The pleasure was almost overwhelming, and each time I thought I would cum, he would back off. A third finger joined the other two, and he squirmed them, jiggled them, waggled them, and—Jesus Christ—I thought I was dying and being reborn….

  Then….

  He stopped.

  I was near sobbing as he let my legs fall down around him. He leaned forward and took me in his arms, and I could feel his cock at my door. He looked at me. Kissed my mouth. I could taste the tang of my body, and it only spurred me on.

  “I’m going to fuck you now,” he whispered.

  “Yes, please,” I gasped. “Make me yours.”

  His eyes widened.

  I nodded.

  Cole reached down between us and adjusted himself, and then ever so gently… pushed. Pushed again. Again.

  “Push out,” he said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. “Like you were going to….”

  I understood and tried and—Oh!—he was inside me.

  For one second there was only surprise, nothing else, and then the pain came.

  God!

  But not as bad as I’d expected. It dropped to a burn and slowly, slowly, slowly he edged himself deeper inside me: in… backing out… in… backing out.

  I could not get over the feeling.

  Like nothing else in the world.

  So strange and yet—

  God.

  —things were happening.

  Unknown happenings.

  And….

  Ah!

  I opened my mouth to say, “Easy!” He was so fucking big and…

  …and he was easy.

  Gentler.

  Slower.

  It burned.

  And then… then something clicked. We were looking into each other’s eyes, and I suddenly understood that this was a part of it, and then I just… opened to him.

  He slid the rest of the way in and seemed almost as surprised as I was and… I… was… his.

  Cole waited a long moment until I nodded and told him, “Now.”

  He fucked me.

  Cole started slow, but I knew I could have none of that and urged him on.

  “Fuck me, fuck me. Fuck me, Cole!”

  And he did. Bit by bit he got faster and faster and finally believed me and pounded into me.

  I had never known such joy.

  We lasted longer than I would have imagined, but soon, all too soon, he shouted and his cock began to jerk, and I could feel him cumming into me. Feel the jets pass through his flesh and into mine. Feel the heat of his semen in me. Filling me.

  He grabbed my cock, stroked it once, twice, and then I was shooting—joining him in mutual orgasms—pumping my cum out between us, drenching us….

  Never.

  Never had I known anything like it.

  And then Cole fell down on me, and I wrapped my arms around him, and I was crying and he was crying and then we were laughing and then we were silent and simply held each other and I knew I would never be the same.

  But I didn’t know how my soul would bear leaving him in the morning.

  Because I was his.

  CHAPTER 14: Bereft

  “WELCOME BACK,” Gary, my manager, said. “We missed you.”

  “Thanks, Gary,” I said.

  He eyed my black cowboy hat. If he thought it was stupid, he didn’t say and I didn’t care. Not one bit. Now I understood why Owen had always worn his for the first few weeks after he got back from Black Bear Guest Ranch.

  And he hadn’t had Cole.

  Cole picked out that hat. I reached up and touched it.

  Cole said I looked great in it. Like a real cowboy. He said that he meant it. He said, “Grrrrrrrr!” What did I care what anyone else thought?

  “Place almost fell apart while you were gone. We—I—really am glad to have you back.” He looked at the hat again, shook his head (at least he was smiling), and walked off down the hallway toward his office.

  I went to the break room to put lunch in the refrigerator. Sliced steak on fry bread. The last of it. And a half ear of corn.

  “Hey, Neil!” I turned to a nice-looking young man with bright new-penny-copper hair. Sloan. Fairly new guy. Good customer service rep. He could go places at Horrell & Howes.

  “Morning, Sloan.”

  “The hat looks good.”

  I smiled. Or tried to. “You think so?” I asked. You’re not laughing at me?

  He leaned in. “You look really good in it,” he said conspiratorially, and then I realized something else. He meant it. He wasn’t talking to me dude to dude. I saw it in his twinkling eyes.

  God. Sloan was gay.

  How the hell had I not known it?

  Because you blinded yourself to knowing.

  “You look like a real cowboy.”

  The words jolted me. Cole’s words.

  “Thanks, Sloan.”

  He nodded. “I think that dude ranch did you good.”

  “It did,” I said quietly.

  “I got to get to my station,” he said and gave me a wave and went down an aisle of the phone-rep cubicles.

  “Have a good day, Sloan,” I called after him.

  Gay.

  And I didn’t think he’d been coming on to me either. It wasn’t like that supervisor at the urinals looking at my dick—showing me his. This was more like… camaraderie.

  He smiled and reached for a hat that wasn’t on his head, tipped it like a gentleman.

  I found myself smiling. A tiny ray of sunshine in an extremely gloomy day.

  I went to my office and hung my hat and then opened my backpack. It made me more comfortable than using a briefcase. I think it made me less “removed” from those I supervised. I didn’t want to be the kind of leader Shelia would have been, treating my employees like I owned them. I’d hated it when I was treated that way through the years, and I thought, I’m not going to do it to anyone else. I knew they’d appreciate it.

  From the backpack, I withdrew an envelope, took out several pictures from my trip, and pinned them to the corkboard on the wall to the right of my desk. Me and Amy and the kids, my cabin, me and Crystal on our horses, and finally, one of me and Cole. He had an arm around my shoulder, and we were both wearing cowboy hats and cowboy shirts. It wasn’t an obvious picture—we could have been friends—but what made me smile was the knowledge that it was a “selfie,” and what couldn’t be seen was that neither of us had been wearing pants. My special secret.

  Someone knocked at the door, and I turned to see Shelia standing in my threshold. I took a deep, quiet breath.

  “Good morning, Shelia.”

  She eyed my hat, and I couldn’t help but notice the flash of distaste that crossed her face. She buried it fast. It might have been my imagination, but I didn’t think so. And dressed the way she was—and it was extremely professional; she always looked good—I wasn’t surprised. That and the fact that she hated me.

  A week in a place that loved me—really loved me—and that wasn’t just counting Cole. And now, five minutes back and
I was already getting some toxicity.

  I fought the urge to sigh.

  “How can I help you?”

  She squared her shoulders.

  “Well, as you know, while you were gone, Gary put me in charge….”

  Yes, I knew. And why a man as smart as he was did such a stupid thing, I didn’t know.

  I nodded.

  She stepped forward and placed a folder on my desk. I looked down at it. She didn’t even hand it to me.

  “It came to my attention that a number of your employees are breaking company rules. I think it is important that they know that can’t be tolerated. Rules exist for a reason. Without them there would be chaos.”

  I was fighting the sigh, fighting the sigh, fighting the sigh.

  “Oh?” I asked. This couldn’t have waited? No “Good morning, Neil”? No “Did you have a nice trip, Neil”? No “I like the hat, Neil. It makes you look like a real cowboy”? No “Grrrrrrrr!”?

  I didn’t pick up the folder, and she lifted an eyebrow.

  “Don’t you agree?”

  “I think it depends on the situation, but yes,” I said. “Rules exist for a reason.” They were, as far as I was concerned, probably different reasons than hers. “Can you give me an idea, though? I have a few things I have to deal with first. Payroll for one.”

  “Well…,” she said, nodding, setting her faux-pearl earrings swaying, “that is important.” She straightened her jacket. “Well, Sloan, for instance.”

  Sloan?

  She nodded again, vigorously, the earrings dancing now. “He used the company fax machine. And Charleen. She made some photocopies. And Thomas.” She stepped closer to my desk and lowered her voice. “He printed some—” She cleared her throat and that distasteful look flashed across her face again. “—pornography from the Internet.”

  I am sad to say my eyebrows shot up. Pornography? Now that was something to be concerned about. And how had he even accessed it?

  “And every day there were so many taking extra time from breaks and getting back late from lunch. It was appalling. Almost too much to list, but I managed it. Excel is a wonderful program.”

  “Thank you, Shelia. I will look at everything carefully.”

  She gave me one swift nod. “I’m only trying to help.” She straightened her jacket once more and turned on her very-high-heeled shoes. She froze at the door and turned back. “I hope you had a nice vacation,” she said stiffly.

  I didn’t believe a word of it. After all, I had just taken my office back. “Thank you, Shelia.” I almost told her that I hoped she enjoyed being in charge. I didn’t. Because I didn’t feel that way at all.

  “Oh. I straightened things up a bit in here. So it would be more organized. I think you will see it is more efficient.”

  Now I stiffened. God. What had she done?

  Before I could respond, she smiled and walked out of my office.

  It took me a little while to see all that she had done. It took me all day to find some of the things I needed and used. For one thing, the postcard with all my passwords that I kept taped to the bottom of my pull-out drawer was gone.

  I found it in the folder she left, with a sticky note that reminded me company passwords should never be accessible to the “general population.”

  It was going to be a long day.

  I pulled out my cell phone. Still no text from Cole. I couldn’t help but be disappointed. But then, it wasn’t totally unexpected. When he was out on the range with guests, coverage was intermittent at best—part of the reason people went to Black Bear Guest Ranch was to get away from technology.

  But that kept me from being able to be only a text away from him.

  I’d never cared one way or the other about cell phones before, except to be able to get ahold of Crystal at a moment’s notice. I’d never cared about texting either.

  Funny how much can change in a week.

  THAT LAST morning had been wonderful and terrible and wonderful-terrible all at once.

  I couldn’t help but think every second that passed was one second closer to being without Cole. My heart was like a stone, even though it jumped every time he looked at me with his beautiful, dark almond eyes and smiled at me.

  He got me up very early and, ignoring our morning erections, insisted we get dressed, ignoring also my pleas that we make love. We didn’t have much longer to make love.

  We stopped at the kitchen, where Cole grabbed a couple of warm cinnamon rolls and put them in a brown paper bag. Then we were off to the stables. We saddled Mystic and Madrigal and rode as fast as I dared across a pasture and into the woods. He took me to another of his secret places, a lovely clearing in the middle of the trees where the warm morning sun shone brightly with golden light.

  There he spread out a blanket and, without a word, stripped naked. I didn’t have to be asked; I did the same. We were both hard and tumbled to the blanket, face to erection, and brought each other to swift orgasms.

  That was when he surprised me again.

  He wanted to ride naked.

  I was nervous as hell, but we did as he asked—of course—and though the saddle was a little rough on my balls, we rode off into the sunlight. It seemed the clearing was a sort of pocket of grass in a second pasture. It was scary and thrilling at the same time to be riding naked and innocent under the clear sky.

  But that’s what life was like with Cole.

  And my heart ached knowing it was almost over.

  Were we over?

  Was this it?

  Was this all there was?

  How was I going to be able to return to my world? How was I going to leave all this behind? Leave Cole behind.

  The night before, he had called me “my love.” Did he mean it? Had that just been some kind of expression? Was it just a rush of feelings because of what had happened that magical week? There was no way he could fall in love with me in just one week, could he?

  But looking at him as we trotted along, horses nickering and tossing their heads now and again, looking at him astride that horse like some young but ancient god, I knew….

  I was in love with him. Truly in love for the first time in my life.

  Truly, madly, deeply….

  CHARLEEN’S PHOTOCOPYING had to do with her church. It was for fliers. She had used her own paper. And Horrell & Howes had a policy about that. If you brought your own paper and what you were copying was for nonprofit reasons, all was well with the world. She just hadn’t filled out the request sheet. I told her to fill it out, mark it for the day before I left, and bring it back to me. I would take care of it. Her gratitude was palpable.

  Thomas’s pornography?

  Classical paintings by the Old Masters for his art history homework. Edouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass, Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2), Paul Cezanne’s Baigneurs, Sleeping Venus by Giorgione, The Birth of Venus by Botticelli, La Danse by Henri Matisse, the classic sculptures of The Dying Gaul and Lysippos’s Weary Herakles. Hardly pornography. The only one I could even sort of think might get under her skin was Andy Warhol’s Resting Boy. Was Shelia the kind of person who would have books like Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Miller’s Tropic of Cancer burned for the same reason?

  It was ridiculous, and I had Thomas fill out some fake paperwork as well.

  And finally there was Sloan.

  He was using the fax machine for medical paperwork for his mother. It turned out she was dying of cancer. Sloan sat impassive before me as he explained. Except for a tremble I don’t think I would have seen if I wasn’t looking for it, he kept totally in control. I found I felt humiliated. God. To be going through that. How I knew that feeling. No. No, I would never know what that felt like. But I knew death. I could empathize.

  I told Sloan to give me any paperwork in the future and I would fax it on my machine. And I assured him I wouldn’t look at it.

  He stood up and thanked me and then stopped. Finally some emotion on his face. “Are those photographs fro
m your vacation?” he asked and pointed at my corkboard.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “May I look?”

  “Sure,” I replied, and he came round to my side of the desk.

  “These are great pictures. Wow. Look at you on that horse and… gosh, who is he?” He pointed at—of course—Cole. “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Yes, he is,” I said before I even realized it. “Th-that’s C-Cole.”

  We locked eyes when I stuttered. And why the hell did I stutter? It made me mad at myself.

  Then I saw the understanding in his eyes and cursed myself once again for a flash of… what was it? Not shame, surely. Embarrassment? That was just as bad.

  Cole was the man I loved and….

  “God,” I said quietly.

  The man I loved.

  And how could I have been surprised at that? Because it was true. I was in love. My heart swelled and ached at the knowledge.

  “Summer romance?” Sloan asked quietly, and this time I refused to deny what had happened to me. Summer romance was right. I had shared loving with another man.

  “Yes,” I said, and my heart pounded. It was a first. I was telling Sloan I was gay. It was one thing to tell Amy. Another for Crystal to realize it—hell, she had joyfully approved. But Sloan was practically a stranger.

  But a gay one.

  And that suddenly made me feel very good. I was a part of something very special. An ancient brotherhood.

  One I would no longer refute.

  “God, those can be a bitch. At least that’s what I’ve heard. I fell in love with a one-night stand.”

  “Sloan. I can’t stop thinking about him.”

  “Tell me about it,” Sloan said. “I have to be friends with him. I see him all the damned time.”

  “Sloan, I can’t even see Cole! He’s six hours away!” My heart was aching now.

  Sloan sighed. He looked at me. “Does he feel the same way?”

  “I think so,” I said. He hasn’t called. “He called me—” I blushed. I was so new at this!

  “Yes?” Sloan encouraged.

  “—my love.” I said it so softly I wasn’t sure he heard me.